


The Wolves Were Always Lurking

by ishtarelisheba



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 'cause i don't plan on pulling punches, (future warnings for...), Angst with a Happy Ending, Animal Attack, Blood, Blood and Gore, F/M, Horror AU, Minor Character Deaths, Werewolves, Young Rumbelle, this is going to be one you need to read the tags for if you're squeamish
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-27 01:16:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15013514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishtarelisheba/pseuds/ishtarelisheba
Summary: Storybrooke is a quiet town, for the most part, despite the wolves that saturate its local legends. Belle French and Eamonn Gold - lifelong friends getting so close to graduation that they can taste it - are the only things that make the place tolerable for one another. When more bodies than usual begin turning up and the dark becomes a real thing to fear, they learn the hard way that the legends are only a thin veneer for truth.





	1. Above Fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Crying wolf may have been the boy's undoing, but the true irony was that the wolves were always lurking nearby." --Wes Fesler_

There were wolves in Storybrooke’s forest. So the legends went. It didn’t matter that there hadn’t been a single credible sighting in over a decade. There was still the occasional cry wolf. There were missing pets, little old ladies reporting shadows outside of their windows, the young mechanic whose death was blamed on wolves before the District Attorney was arrested for murder. The stories were a part of the town’s history, its identity, lending themselves to everything from the annual Halloween werewolf-scarecrow contest to the local radio station. 

“W-O-L-F WOLF 98!” Ruby called the sign in between songs. “Ruby Red here for the night shift. Up next, I have some Jack Off Jill for my riot grrrls. Make some trouble for me.”

Belle set the old weather radio out on the roof before climbing through her bedroom window. He waited for her on his own roof, but he always did. He always seemed to be there first.

The night was still, and it was easy to hear Eamonn when he said, “Hey. Can you turn it up a little?”

She closed the window and sat against the wall next to it. “Did you have dinner?” she asked as she turned the little knob, putting the radio down with the speaker pointed at him.

“More or less.” He shrugged, stretching his legs out toward the edge. 

Which likely meant he’d made do with a can of beanie weenies while his father was passed out on the couch. Belle eyed his thin frame.

“We had some leftovers. If you want, I-”

“I don’t want.”

She sighed at him, and though she knew he couldn’t hear it, the moon gave enough light that she was sure he saw the look she gave. Belle didn’t think she’d ever get over feeling guilty for eating well when she knew he didn’t the majority of the time.

“Thanks, though,” he amended with a sheepish smile. 

“I was thinking,” she began, her fingers keeping time to the music against her thigh. “We could go to the well tomorrow while the light is good. You could bring your camera?” And she’d bring along a big lunch.

She could only just see Eamonn’s lopsided grin. “What? You? Skipping classes?”

“It’s all over for us,” she said with a shrug. “Mid-term grades are in, the diplomas are on order. Busy work is all that’s left.”

“You’d go out into the woods after what August said he saw?” he teased, letting a dark lilt seep into his words.

“The well isn’t that far in. It’ll be broad daylight.” Belle rolled her eyes. “All August does is stretch the truth, anyway.”

“The lengths you go to, to keep from calling him a liar.”

“It’s not polite.”

“And Belle French would never be impolite,” he said, needling her.

“If you bring up the whole thing with Eddie Hyde and the conch shell-” She narrowed her eyes at him. 

Eamonn grinned, holding his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t say a _word!”_

It was the way their evenings went. Conversations about nothing across the very few feet between their houses, the radio on because Ruby played the only decent music that came from the local station on her shift, keeping one another company until it was time to crawl into bed. Every minute of free time, they spent it together. It never felt like enough. 

She busily tried not to think about college.

“Ten thirty-five and I’m just getting started,” Ruby informed her audience, her voice low and sultry. “Let’s see if I can work you up so hard I hear stories tomorrow morning…”

“We should go in.” Belle turned the radio down, then off. “It’s too cold and I have to be up early.”

“I’ll throw you my coat?” he offered, but she could see the disappointment in the way he slouched. 

She shook her head, meaning to tell him he’d see her in less than eight hours, when the words were startled away from her. A rustling came from somewhere below them. The sound could almost have been brushed off as the breeze, maybe one of the neighbors’ wandering dogs. Almost - if it hadn’t been followed straightaway by the hungry, guttural sound of something far larger. There was a dry crush of dead grass being disturbed by something dragging.

It was too dark for her to see Eamonn’s eyes, but she could tell that the same shocked confusion was in his face as her own. She opened her mouth, but he waved frantically for her to be quiet. He eased down toward the edge of the Dutch gable roof until he could peer over. Making herself as small as she could, Belle did the same, leaning, looking to the ground. 

All that she could see was shadow. Their houses kept moonlight from filtering all the way down. After a few seconds, her eyes began to adjust to staring into darkness rather than the light of Eamonn’s bedroom window, and she saw. A great, hulking shadow heavier than the rest around it had stopped in the path between houses. It stooped over something. Noises continued to drift up from it. Snarling, slavering, ripping. It took her another moment to realize that it was _eating._

Belle clamped both hands tight over her mouth, over the scream she felt rise like fire in her throat. Her insides trembled and she felt hot and cold rush through her in waves. She wanted to close her eyes so that she wouldn’t have to see, but if she did, she wouldn’t know where it was. Not knowing was worse.

The sounds went on for too long. She began to fear that they would never end, that it would never leave. Finally, following a sickening crunch, it stopped. She imagined that she could hear it lick its lips. The shadow moved, continuing its way between the houses, and dragged the remains of its kill with it toward the treeline beyond their backyards.

 _“What_ the hell?” she breathed after it disappeared into the treeline. 

Eamonn whispered almost frantically back to her, “Go inside!”

She did what he said without another thought. Inside was a good idea. Inside, with the window closed and locked. He waited until she had done precisely that before doing the same. 

Belle got ready for bed with constant glances to the window, as though the thing would turn up on her roof. Out of habit, she reached to turn out her bedside lamp, stopping before the knob clicked. She found herself wanting to leave it on for the first time since she was a little girl. Monsters in the closet and beneath the bed didn’t scare her anymore, but the thing she’d seen outside was real.

Her phone chirped in the otherwise silent bedroom just as she pulled her covers up, making her jump and her heart pound all over again. It was Eamonn, though. Of course it was Eamonn. He wanted to know whether she was okay, and after she assured him that she was, he said goodnight. 

She laid the phone in bed next to her. His last text on the screen made her feel better than any amount of locks and lights could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (It hasn't yet earned the explicit label I applied, but you know me. _It will_.)


	2. Don't Run

Eamonn sat huddled on the front steps of her house, his coat pulled tight around him against the chill on the early morning air. It was where he waited for her most mornings. Running into her father wouldn’t be an ideal start to anyone’s day. They were more or less civil for her sake, but Moe French didn’t like him, and he couldn’t pretend the feeling wasn’t mutual.

He heard a thump near the door before Belle opened it, hinges screeching both ways as she came out. She dropped her backpack next to him and stopped to pull on her own coat.

“Got something you should see,” he said, and he left his own bag on the step when he got up. He beckoned her to follow around the side of the house.

Walking from his own house to wait for her, he hadn’t been able to help seeing it. He’d stood staring for a good five minutes before making himself go on. Eamonn waited at the corner. It was more than visible from there, the morning sun shining right through the path between their houses. She came up beside him to peer between the corner and his shoulder.

“What are you-” she began before her mouth dropped open and she pushed in closer. “Oh, my God.”

The dew seemed to have kept it from drying. Blood, dark and thick and glistening red in the leaves and on the grass, stretching a trail right out to the forest.

“Yeah,” he agreed with the shock in her voice. It was so still that he could hear the tremble in her breathing.

Belle cleared her throat. “Well. Hey. Proof we weren’t having, like, folie à deux or something?”

“That’s a real comfort,” he muttered. “It’s going to smell when the day warms up.”

She wrinkled her nose at his observation. “Would it be weird or- or wrong to wash it away?”

They looked at one another for a moment before he went to uncoil the garden hose from its big plastic hook on the wooden siding of her house. He covered the end with his thumb to make it spray hard and hosed the blood down as best he could, walking along right against the wall.

“Am I the only one with an urge to follow it and see where it goes?” she called to him as he reached the other end of the path.

Eamonn’s eyes shifted toward her before his head turned. “Yes.”

She nodded. “Just checking.”

. ．⋅・˙ට˙・⋅ ．.

They were too far from the end of the year to feel excitement for it, but too near to care about much of anything. A place that for the last four years of their lives had felt frantic and haunted by nervous students and fear of failure, now that graduation was so near, only felt slow and fading. The underclassmen bumping past in the halls were teeming little aliens on a mission they at last saw an end to.

Eamonn’s history teacher gave the class an early liberation for lunch. He waited outside of Belle’s English class, listening to the end of a game of hangman. It was her voice that he heard call out, _“The Blazing World_!”

Groans went up and he grinned. Sounded like she’d won the majority of the rounds. Of course she had.

The bell rang and people poured forth from every door along the upstairs hallway. He pushed himself into the corner until the crowd thinned.

Belle, as usual the last to leave, looked right at him as she left the classroom. “Here.” She held out hands cupped around something. When he opened his own, she dropped a dozen or so strawberry candies into them. “Miss Blanchard threw us one for every puzzle we got.”

“And by ‘us’ you mean you.” He swung his bag around to the front, lifting the flap so he could put the candy in. “You don’t want them?”

She shrugged and pulled at his coat to bring him along when she walked away. “C’mon, I want to go by Granny’s before we go out to the well.”

“You still want to go to the well?” he asked. He couldn’t even be surprised.

 _“Well,”_ she said, shooting a grin over at him. “Yeah. If you’ll still come with me.”

Belle trotted quickly down the stairs and he followed a couple behind, catching up as she turned with a hand on the post at the bottom to head for the door around the other side. She caught two fingers in the loop on the side of his navy wool coat when he fell into step with her. Outside it was trying to get cloudier. The day felt like it was shaping up to be messy.

“It occurs to me, is it a good idea to go traipsing _into the woods_ after what we saw last night?” He lowered his voice and leaned a little closer. “After what we hosed off the grass?”

“We’re fine. It’s broad daylight.” She smiled, brave in the warmth of the sun that peeked through. “I’ll protect you.”

It wasn’t a long walk from the school to the diner, but nothing around town was really a long walk. He waited outside while she went in. Beverly Lucas, the eponymous Granny, was fond of Belle. Him, she wasn’t so taken with. Belle came back out carrying a plastic bag.

“You have your camera, don’t you?” she asked, holding the food away when he reached to carry it. 

He stepped behind her to put himself on the street side of the sidewalk. “As directed, yes, ma’am.”

People were starting to come out for their lunch hour errands. Belle and Eamonn made their way down a couple of blocks and crossed the road, taking the narrow alley between the ice cream parlor and abandoned pawn shop to get a straight shot to the forest. The well wasn’t terribly remote - just far enough in and a long enough walk to be private. 

Beneath a great eldritch beast of a beech tree with sprawling, mossy branches, rested a small stone well being ever so slowly consumed by moss, itself. There was a little shale roof over top and a cobblestone base beneath, and a stick between the supports still wrapped with remnants of rotted and broken rope. It could have been there for a hundred years, as far as they knew. The well certainly looked it. They’d happened across it during one of Belle’s ‘forest adventures’ when they were small, and they had claimed the well, tree, and clearing as their own hideaway of sorts. There was no counting how many junk food picnics, how many secret meetings and moments of sanctuary they’d found there over the years. 

Eamonn pulled his camera from the inner pocket of his bag. He’d worked at the cannery the summer after his freshman year, managing to buy it before his father got him fired and took the rest of his savings. The camera still worked, though. That was the important thing.

He bent over the well’s rim to get a photo of the stagnant water, leaves and bits of detritus on its surface. Next to him, Belle leaned far over the edge, the dark waves of her hair sliding to hang in. Propping a knee on the rim of the well beside her, Eamonn lifted himself up over her to take a few shots.

“Let me see,” she said when he dropped back down.

His hair fell forward, brushing against her cheek as she leaned close, both their heads ducked to see the little display. He shaded it with his hand to stop the image from being washed out. It was almost unearthly. The light played off her hair from the slight side angle he’d taken, revealing only her head and her hands curled over the stone rim as she looked into a seeming infinite darkness.

She grinned up at him. “A witch peering into the pit where she’s just pushed the Inquisitor.”

“The princess looking into an enchanted well to ask after the fate of her beloved,” he countered.

Belle closed one eye, squinting the other at him. “I like mine better.”

A small, sharp crack echoed through the clearing. The snap of a twig. They startled, both looking to the treeline to find nothing there.

“Yeah, we aren’t jumpy or anything, are we…” Belle’s eyes scanned the undergrowth a moment longer before she tried to laugh it off. “Come on. Lunch is getting cold.”

He sat down on the cobblestones with her, accepting a cheeseburger and cup of iced tea when she offered them. She set an order of fries between them to share. 

Eamonn was the quicker eater, and he fiddled with his camera while she finished. He took photos of her against the dark backdrop of the woods - the way her hair fell across her shoulders, the shape of her back, a fingertip in her mouth as she licked salt from it. She made a face at him for taking pictures while she ate. He took one of that, too, wrinkled nose, stuck out tongue and all. 

A bird somewhere high in the trees began to call. Belle looked up for it, and when he framed her to take a photo, he found that when he leaned a certain way, the light came through behind her in a golden aura. He was admiring her through the camera display when more birds raised up a commotion. The forest was suddenly filled with warning calls.

Belle frowned, squinting and shading her eyes. “What’s the matter with you?”

Eamonn’s camera display went dim and he looked up, himself, to find that more clouds were moving in. Everything turned heavily overcast, extinguishing the bit of sun that made it through and ruining the light. 

“It’s gonna rain,” Belle grumbled. She ate the last couple of fries out of their little white bag and crumpled it up, stuffing it into the bigger one with the rest of their trash. “Figures.”

“We should go before it starts pouring.” He lifted his messenger bag strap over his head to cross his chest, pulling her to her feet when she stuck her hand out to him. 

They were near the treeline at the side of the clearing nearer town when she nudged at him with her elbow. “I want to see what you took.”

He handed his camera to her. “Not a lot. It clouded up before I could get too many.”

Belle flicked through, and he watched from the corner of his eye, catching every hint of smile that crossed her face. Her smile dropped away, though, near the end of what he’d taken at the well, and she stopped walking. She was looking at the one he’d caught with the light behind her.

“You don’t like it?” he asked.

“Eamonn…” She opened her fingertips against the display, making it zoom in.

He saw it. A pair of eyes glinting yellow-gold out in the darkness of the forest floor right beyond the well. 

“Eamonn,” Belle said again. She turned her head a bit, not quite looking over her shoulder. “We need to-”

“Yeah. Don’t run. Just go,” he told her, grabbing her upper arm to get her started.

They had to go into the trees again. There was a hundred yards worth of forest between them and town, and he _felt_ watched. The cloud cover was so heavy that the street lights had been triggered. Off and on, they could see the glow through the trees as they reached something like a halfway point. 

It was a relief when they broke into the open again. He knew better than to imagine they were safe, but perhaps saf _er._

He kept hold of her arm without quite realizing it as they walked back to the main road through town, but she didn’t seem to mind. She walked close, steps quick, unable to help glancing over her shoulder even then. The need to get farther away from the woods was so strong that both very nearly missed the sheriff’s car parked in front of the school as they passed by.

Belle screeched to a halt again. She pulled her lip between her front teeth, worrying at it.

“Do you think that’s bad?” he asked, eyeing the car. Through the windows across the front of the building, Eamonn could see Miss Drake ushering her eighth graders down the hallway along toward the auditorium. 

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “If somebody’s called an assembly with the sheriff, it’s not going to be good.”

He sighed in resignation. “Come on,” he said, veering back in the school’s direction. “So much for skipping the rest of the day.”

The principal had already taken the podium when they trailed in to stand at the back. Ms. Ghorm tapped on the microphone to gain the attention of the students.

“Silence would be appreciated and appropriate,” the principal scolded, and the room fell almost quiet. “I’m sure some of you know that William Scarlett, one of our seniors, was reported missing last night. He is no longer missing. Early this morning, his body was located by a deputy.”

A wave of sympathetic noises rolled across the students, and Eamonn had an uncharitable thought regarding how few of them had ever given Will the time of day. 

Belle leaned against him. “I was afraid of that,” she whispered. “He’d never not go home to Ana.”

The principal cleared her throat. “Because of circumstances surrounding the discovery, I’m turning the assembly over to Sheriff Humbert. Sheriff,” she said, gesturing to the podium as she stepped away.

The sheriff looked supremely uncomfortable behind the microphone. He adjusted its angle. “First, I’d like to extend my condolences to anyone who knew William. I’m sure his presence will be missed. Unfortunately, the nature of his death looks to have been a wild animal attack, which-”

His announcement was cut off by far louder exclamations from the assembled students. With a resigned expression, he waited until the noise calmed somewhat.

“Which _means_ the sheriff’s office is instituting an eight ᴘᴍ curfew until future notice,” Sheriff Humbert went on. “Anyone going out before curfew should remain in groups and avoid isolated areas, particularly as it begins getting dark out. Stay well away from the woods. We will track down the animal responsible, but until then, everyone should be vigilant.”

Ms. Ghorm took her podium back with a curt, “Thank you, Sheriff Humbert.” She brought the microphone down again, scanning over the auditorium with a strained smile. “Classes are released early today. Free grief counseling will be available with Dr. Hopper at his office beginning immediately after the assembly.”

Eamonn looked to Belle, finding her staring up at him with wide, fearful eyes. Her hand found his and held tight. Without a word, each knew what the other was thinking. 

They were the last to see Will. They’d washed him off the lawn.


	3. Disbelief

The storm broke before they could get out of the school. They stood just inside the doors, watching people run to their cars or down the sidewalk with things held up in an attempt to shelter their heads, and decided with an exchanged look that there was no point to walking home in it. 

Belle and Eamonn camped out in the school library. It was by no means an unusual spot for the pair of them. They’d likely spent an accumulation of years in the school and town libraries, him following her through the stacks, sitting on the floor with her when she couldn’t wait to go out to a table to start her book. He likewise trailed after her today, letting his bag and then himself drop to the floor when she stopped to tap a fingertip along the spines. When she found what she was looking for, she began handing book after book down to him. A few in, he caught her drift.

“Zoology,” he said, looking at the peeling cover of a book on the subject of nocturnal animals. “Is this about my photo? Are you doing research?”

She held another about the life cycle of coyotes out to him. “We are, yep.”

Belle’s research mode was a sight to see. She went through books as if they owed her money, only pausing to take his camera from his messenger bag to have a hard look at the picture again before going back to reading. Soon they were surrounded with stacks of books - unread to one side, discards to the other, and a pile of open ones in front of them with possibilities marked by a rainbow of plastic sticky flags. 

Mouth pulling thoughtfully to one side, she looked up at the shelves, seeming to scan for something in particular. Her gaze drifted across and then down until she made a triumphant little sound. She leaned back, stretching to reach the bottom shelf behind her.

Eamonn stared as hard as he could at a column of text in one of the books she’d assigned him. What he carefully did _not_ look at was the way her shirt rode up or the strip of stomach, belly button included, that peeked from between her t-shirt and jeans.

“There are tons of animals whose eyes reflect in the dark,” she said as she sat up again, and he sighed into his collar. “Raccoons, cows, felines and canines, spiders-”

 _“Pretty_ sure it wasn’t a spider,” he pointed out as he gave her a bit of a sidelong look.

“Australia-” she began, smiling beatifically right back over at him. 

With memories of her blue-ringed octopus story, he interrupted her again. “And I don’t want to know what horrifying thing Australia has. Not today.”

She snickered, bumping her shoulder into his by way of an apology. “Okay.”

“Whatever the hell it was, it chased us through the woods and stopped when we hit town. You can probably count out cows.” He bumped her in return. Forgiven. 

Belle chewed on her lower lip for a while, flipping pages in the book she’d reached back for. “What if it was a wolf?”

He leaned to look at her book, finding a grid of dark images arranged across the section she had it open to. “Forest service says there are no wolves anywhere around town.”

“Yeah, well. They claim there aren’t any mountain lions in Maine, either, and people have _pictures_ of those.” 

“It didn’t sound like a mountain lion, what we heard last night.”

“Right. Yeah. My whole point about eyes.” She patted the open pages. “Some animals have different colors of eye shine, too. I thought maybe whatever it was having a yellow shine might help narrow it down. At least a little.”

“Good thought,” Eamonn said. “Does it?”

She pulled a face. “Kind of more than I expected. Like you said, the sounds it made. And it would have to be something that could… you know. Do the kind of damage we saw evidence of. To a person. From what I can find, Coyotes and mountain lions have eyes that reflect greenish yellow.”

He didn’t like the length of her hesitation. “And?”

“Wolves vary. Yellow, greenish yellow…” Belle squinted back down at her book. “Depends on who you ask. Let me see the picture again?”

Taking his camera from where it lay on top of his bag, he put it in her waiting hand. They sat side by side, heads together, examining the photo zoomed in on the small screen.

“The eyes in the picture are definitely yellow,” she murmured.

“We need to tell somebody about this.” He looked over at her, at the way she so determinedly tried to find more than eyes in the dark on the camera display. “Somebody who can actually do something about it.”

“You mean we should go tell the sheriff,” she translated.

As much as he hated to admit it. “That _would_ be a good choice, yeah.”

She sighed through her nose, sounding unconvinced.

“Belle?” he prodded.

“Fine!” She grumbled to herself, taking a yellow flag to stick near the top of the page. “Fine, we’ll tell him, show him the picture, see what he says.”

“How much do you think we should tell him?” Eamonn asked. He began closing her flagged books while she shelved the ones in the discard pile. 

She wiggled a book in her hand as she looked for its spot. “We’ll have to tell him about the woods today, I guess. _Not_ about it being outside our houses, though.”

“Yeah.” He handed the last couple of discards up to her when she stuck her hand out. “They’ve already found Will. It won’t do any good to have deputies stomping around.”

Finished, she squatted down to zip her backpack. He thumbed his bag’s strap over his head and carried the flagged books to the counter for her. With the librarian nowhere to be found, Belle scanned them out for herself before dividing the books between them so she wouldn’t be loaded so heavily.

“All right. Off to see the cops,” she said with the least amount of enthusiasm she could muster, catching hold of the loop on his coat again.

The sky was well into dusk when they left the school, but the walk over to the big, blocky sheriff’s department was short and the rain had gentled to a mist. They’d ducked into the building before the water had time to finish soaking into their hair. 

“Is the sheriff in?” Belle asked the deputy manning the desk nearest the door off the short hallway leading from the entrance to the bullpen.

The deputy - a lanky, slightly greasy guy with his attention on a babes-and-hunting magazine and his feet propped on the desk’s corner - jerked his thumb back toward the windowed office in the corner. Another officer, Miss Blanchard’s built blonde boyfriend, stepped over to knock the first’s feet from the desk. 

“Graham’s still here, yeah. Go on in,” Deputy Nolan said with a polite nod. He turned back to the guy at the desk when they headed away. “You’re not being paid to read about racks of either sort, Keith. There are three calls blinking. Do your job.”

The office door was open, and Eamonn knocked on it as Belle walked in asking, “Sheriff Humbert?”

“Hm?” he said, his eyes on a sheaf of papers in front of him. He signed the bottom of one and flipped it over onto a stack to his right.

 _What kind of paperwork goes with finding a dead high schooler?_ Eamonn wondered.

“Um. I’m Belle-”

“I know who you are, Miss French, Mr. Gold.” Another couple of seconds and he put his pen down, looking up to give them a kind smile. “I make it my practice to keep up with my townspeople.”

Eamonn wasn’t in the least surprised that the sheriff knew his name. The police had been out to his house more than a few times over the years. He could remember the days when he was small enough for the man who used to be Deputy Humbert to rest a hand on top of his head while his mother assured everyone that everything was fine.

Belle dropped her backpack off her shoulder, down to her hand, and perched on the edge of the chair across from the sheriff. She looked up at Eamonn. “Tell him,” she said, and the sentiment that it was his idea to come here, he could be the one to talk was fairly clear.

“We have something that might be about the… whatever it is that attacked Will,” he began. People weren’t his favorite thing, and that went double for police. He did his best to look like an adult. Calm and sensible and not as if he wanted to just ask Belle if she’d say it.

“Did you see something?” Sheriff Humbert asked, suddenly far more interested.

“Sort of.” Eamonn brought out his camera, waking it up and flicking through for the right picture before stepping forward to hand it across the desk. He cleared his throat. “We were in the woods during our lunch period. I took some photos, and when we looked back at them, we found that. We started back toward town and it… chased us.”

The sheriff frowned down at the camera, zooming out on the photograph and back in again. “Where exactly were you when you took this?”

Eamonn traded a look with Belle. “East. Back from the old pawn shop.”

“Mm. It’s good that you came in. I wouldn’t discourage you from it.” Sheriff Humbert scratched his beard along his jaw before offering the camera back. “Y’know, though, it’s probably nothing. Could’ve been a cat.”

“A _cat?”_ Belle jumped into the conversation at that, giving him a dry look.

“Maine Coon, maybe. They can get big,” the sheriff went on.

Her expression fell farther into sarcasm. It was a look Eamonn was so familiar with that he felt an instinct to step out of the office. He settled for very studiously making certain he got his camera back into the right spot in his bag.

She let her backpack rest on the floor, crossing her arms over her chest as she asked, “When is the last time a cat chased you through the woods?” 

“Could be it was hungry,” the sheriff reasoned.

Belle scoffed, her voice going up an octave. “Yeah, I bet!”

“Look, Miss French.” The sheriff gave her a patient smile. “That photo doesn’t tell me anything, and neither of you actually saw what chased you. I don’t know what you want me to do.”

That chafed at Eamonn. Someone had been killed by an animal. They’d come in with a photo and suspicions. Somewhat piddly proof, sure, but not so little that it should’ve been brushed off that easily. He was sure that telling the sheriff what they’d heard last night and seen this morning between their houses would make him do something more. But that would mean cops all over their yards and in the woods behind, and the thought of it made his guts hurt.

“Nothing, apparently!” Belle snipped.

A fresh rumble of thunder rolled overhead. It was as good an excuse as any to get her away from the sheriff before she said something that might get her in real trouble. 

He reached to give her shoulder a gentle bump with the back of his hand. “Sounds like the rain’s about to start up again. We should go.”

Almost before he got the words out of his mouth, a downpour broke so heavily they could hear it sheeting across the roof. Even the sheriff gave the ceiling an impressed glance.

“Why don’t I drive the two of you home?” Sheriff Humbert offered.

Belle’s lips pinched together. “We can walk.”

“It’s pouring,” the sheriff pointed out, gesturing toward the window with a tilt of his head, “it’s dark. I was serious about that curfew.”

He was up and had his jacket off the back of the desk chair before either of them could find an excuse. A ride home in a cop car didn’t thrill Eamonn, but maybe it _was_ better than walking back out to their neighborhood in a storm. Particularly with whatever the thing was lurking around town. They followed Sheriff Humbert through to the department’s covered parking lot and let him put them in the back of his car.

It was a quiet ride. Eamonn had nothing to talk about with the sheriff, and the sheriff wasn’t one for small talk. Belle was having herself an angry sulk. They went rather slowly, accounting for how little visibility there was through the pelting rain. 

Sheriff Humbert parked close to the front steps, getting the driver’s side as far under the wide eave of the house as he could, and got out to open the door next to Eamonn. The last thing he expected was his father stepping out onto the porch. He suddenly wished he’d walked home after all. His father gave the sheriff a brief wave and smiled, but Malcolm Gold’s eyes had an all too familiar vicious glint to them. Something inside him curled in small.

Belle grabbed his arm. “Do you want me to go in with you? Explain?” she asked, worry clear on her face.

“No,” he said quickly. He gave her a lopsided smile. He couldn’t handle her being in the crossfire. “I’ll see you in the morning if we can’t go up tonight?”

She nodded and let go, leaning when he got out to look at Malcolm before the sheriff closed the door to take her over to her own steps. Eamonn ducked through the narrow waterfall of rain coming off the roof. He knew it was intentional that he’d have to walk right past his father to get inside the house. 

Steeling himself, he tried to shut down his thoughts as well as he could. He had such a tight grip on the strap of his bag across his chest that it hurt his palm as he crossed the porch to the front door. Eamonn could smell the whiskey on him. As soon as he was within reach, his father slapped him across the side of his head so hard his eyes jarred, making his vision swim for a second.

“What the fuck did you do now, boy?” Malcolm snarled, following in on his heels to give him a second slap before slamming the door.


	4. In Wait

Belle took a blue and white flannel from her dresser drawer, pulling it on before her coat. The shirt was Eamonn’s - or had been once, before he stopped wearing flannels and she appropriated it from his closet along with a few others. It was worn and soft, and perfect for days when she needed a little extra comfort. 

She’d texted to check in on him during dinner the night before and didn’t receive a response until near midnight, when he sent a message consisting of only ‘goodnight.’ Knowing what he likely had to deal with at home after she left him was the crap icing on the crap cake that had been the last few days. It sat right on top of the memorial being held for Will before school and her annoyance and disappointment toward the sheriff for not listening to them, making everything that much worse.

Eamonn waited on her porch, squatted down with his back against the wall next to the front door. He put a hand behind him to push himself up. 

“Hey,” she greeted, stopping next to him to bring a backpack strap up onto her shoulder. She had to bite the inside of her cheek against asking if he was all right. He never did like that kind of inquiry after a run-in with his father.

Then she got a good look at him. At his split lip. At the bruise developing on his cheekbone. 

She must have made some sound of dismay, because he ducked his head, making his hair fall forward to hide his cheek, and murmured, “Don’t…”

Belle reached out for his arm to tug him closer by his sleeve and he flinched when she made contact. She rose up on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck, hugging him tight. Something hurt in her chest, seeing him now and imagining what he’d gone through last night. What he had gone through _every_ time. It took a second for him to put his arms around her. It always did. But the tension eventually went out of him and he burrowed his face against the collar of her coat.

She and Eamonn had more or less been the center of one another’s lives for more than a decade. There’d been mornings when it was so much worse, but she found herself wishing harder than ever that she could protect him. She wanted him safe. No matter what it took, she decided, she’d take him with her when she got out of Storybrooke. She was fairly certain she loved him more than anyone else in the world, both on her part and on his. She just never had been sure how to tell him that.

“I hate him,” she whispered over Eamonn’s shoulder, and he made a muffled grunt of agreement.

He held on a moment longer before giving her a tighter squeeze, raising his head. Belle dropped a kiss on his cheek and let go. She couldn’t help thinking about what kind of bruises there were that she couldn’t see. Dropping her heels back down to the porch, she gave his hair a pet over either side with her hands, pretending that she did nothing more than neaten it. His cheeks and nose were pink from the extra chilly post-storm morning, and she wondered just how long he’d been outside her door.

She stepped back to give him space. He had yet to meet her eyes this morning. It would probably take him half the day to, as turned inward as he went when he hurt. She waited for him while he seemed to gather himself, double checking his bag and fussily pulling his sweater straight. They had time.

. ．⋅・˙ට˙・⋅ ．.

Rather than being spread out across the school square in their normal groups, everyone had crowded themselves in the vicinity of the auditorium entrance. It made morning chatter louder than usual. Belle wove through, taking Eamonn with her as she made her way to the doors.

“They found somebody else last night,” Ariel Halloran said from somewhere off to the right of them. “That’s all I heard.”

“I heard Mr. Marco was the one who found a body, and they had to rush him to the hospital, it scared him so badly,” Mulan Hua chimed in as she pushed through the group, making people ahead of her bump around.

Jefferson corrected them without looking up from his phone. “It was Abigail King. The jeweler. She was found early this morning by one of the patrols the sheriff set up, and are you kidding? Mr. Marco is made from sturdier stuff than that.”

“Lily told me that her mom told her the sheriff’s department is trying to get the school to have a daytime prom Saturday instead of Friday night,” Ariel said in one breath. “But Ms. Ghorm won’t change it because they’ve put too much money into equipment and decoration rentals.”

Belle frowned, looking over at Eamonn to find him giving his feet an even more troubled glare. She could almost hear what was going through his head. They needed to tell someone who’d talk to the police and be credible enough to be taken more seriously. They _did,_ she supposed.

He could feel Belle eyeing him for a few seconds even before she nudged him and leaned close to say, “I guess we do need to tell somebody else.”

Eamonn nodded. He didn’t feel like butting heads with a teacher today, but that didn’t mean much with everything else going on. 

“What do you think about Miss Novak?” she asked.

The physics teacher wouldn’t have been his first choice, but she was respected and well-liked. He nodded again. “Can’t hurt to try.”

“I’ll talk to her after class,” Belle told him. She gave him a small smile and a tug at his sleeve. “I won’t make you do the telling again.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Berk Gaston elbowing through the crowd toward them. Eamonn grit his teeth. This was going to be one of _those_ days, wasn’t it?

The hairy behemoth shoved Jefferson aside to make room for himself, leering at Belle’s flippy skirt and dark tights. He ran his thumb and finger over the corners of his mouth as he looked.

“Great shirt,” he said squarely to her chest.

She glanced down at the silhouette of Princess Leia on her top, and before she could form any sort of response, he barrelled on.

“Bet you have a gold bikini at home, too, don’t you?” Berk chuckled at what he clearly thought was a clever reference.

She breathed out on a longsuffering sigh. Dealing with Berk was an at least once a week thing. Giving her coat a sharp yank by the open front, she stuck her chin out to eye him.

“The gold bikini was gross. She hated the stupid thing,” Belle told him in a measured tone that spoke to having said it more than once. “There was nothing sexy about it.”

He snorted dismissively. “Guess that’s a matter of opinion.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and set her jaw. “And you know what they say about opinions. In this case, it’s just yours that stinks.” 

“Hey, hey, now. I meant it as a compliment. Don’t get mad,” he said with a grin. “That’s not what I came over to talk to you about, anyway.”

“Do you mind getting to it, then? Because the memorial’s going to start any minute,” she reminded him.

“I want you to go to prom with me,” Berk announced as though it were some privilege she’d won. He stepped closer to her, crowding Eamonn back a step to do it. “It’s not like you can turn me down, Belle. You don’t have anybody else to take you.”

Eamonn tilted his face up, looking at the ceiling of the canopy over the walkway. “It’s like I’m invisible,” he muttered to himself with a sarcastic wag of his head. “If only I could harness this power and use it for good…”

“Have you ever _had_ a real girlfriend, Gold?” Berk said, sneering down at him. “I mean, besides your hand. And don’t say Milah, ’cause we all knew what that was.”

Belle stared at Berk in disbelief for a few seconds before looking to Eamonn to check whether he was all right. He was staring at Berk, too, a stricken expression on his face, and he sort of staggered another step backward. She’d intended to go for a marginally more polite turndown, but that was a straw nobody was allowed to break.

“I sure as hell _can_ turn you down,” she corrected Berk. “You don’t get to ask me out and talk to my friend that way in the same breath.”

He laughed and looked at Eamonn again. “Gotta have a girl defend you, huh? Can’t even say I’m surprised. That whole thing about you wearing panties was true, huh?”

“Shut your mouth!” Putting all the strength she could behind it, Belle shoved at the middle of his chest, managing to move him a step back. The conversations around them went silent. “You realize this is Wednesday, yeah? And prom is Friday night? Your invitation is really damn late, which means I was pretty far down the list, and you’ve been turned down, what, a half dozen times? More? You might be desperate, but I’m not.”

“I’m not desperate!” he protested, and she knew she’d hit the right nerve when his voice went up.

She raised her eyebrows. “No? Weren’t you going with Laurette?”

“That- it- I decided not to go with her,” he stammered awkwardly.

“Meaning she dumped you to go with Anton,” Belle surmised. “Good for her!”

“She didn’t dump me for-”

“You stand right in front of me and treat my best friend like shit, and you honestly think I’d go _anywhere_ with you after that?”

The way Berk looked at her in confusion said he obviously had. “Don’t you want to go to prom?”

“Not with you.” Maybe that would get through his skull. A thought occurred to her, and it was out of her mouth before she could stop it. “Maybe Urse is still looking for a date.”

She knew full well that Urse was going with Elle Deville and would tell him precisely which cliff to throw himself off of. Or throw him over one, herself. Belle hoped she was there to witness it.

Chatter didn’t have time to start up again before the auditorium doors swung inward and everyone began filing through. She pushed Eamonn in ahead of her. A few teachers stood just inside, handing out ʟᴇᴅ light dots, explaining over and over that they were meant to serve in place of candles. Belle attached hers to her coat lapel and took Eamonn’s to activate it when he didn’t, clipping it onto his messenger bag strap.

Something about the memorial felt like little more than lipservice. She and Eamonn had known Will. Not well, but in passing. He’d been at the edge of the school’s ‘social order’ in the same way they were. They’d known him just well enough to be among the first few told when he and Ana snuck off to get married earlier in the school year, and to know that very few of the people gathered in the auditorium actually gave a damn about him. The memorial seemed like more of an excuse to join in some artificial act of public mourning than a real honor to his memory. 

The first bell rang and Ms. Ghorm dismissed them for class. Eamonn murmured something to the effect of, “English…” before turning to go the other way down the row of seats.

“I’ll see you in-” Belle started to answer, but he’d already darted off. She frowned to herself. “Miss Novak’s room.”

First period had never passed more slowly. She adored her foreign language classes, but playing hangman in German was one game too many. When the bell rang, she was sitting at the edge of her chair, ready to get out first. Walking into Miss Novak’s room to find the right angle of a gallows on the whiteboard with blanks drawn underneath was almost enough to make her cry. She dropped her backpack beside her desk and sat down to wait for Eamonn. At least she had him for the next two classes. 

He came in just at the end of the stream of students and took his spot in the desk next to her, still not looking at her properly. His posture alone tugged at her instinct to hug him again. 

“Now, for those of you who feel compelled to work all the way up to your last day, I have a list of pages and problem numbers there. As for the rest of us, we’re going to slack off again,” Miss Novak said with a wink and a bright little smile. 

Belle folded her arms on top of her desk and lay her head down on them, electing to not participate in either. Instead, she watched Eamonn while he actually did the busywork assignment from the other half of the board. If that wasn’t an indication of how badly he’d been upset, she didn’t know what was. He sped through the problems and flipped through the textbook for more. 

Hands down, she was best in English and language classes, but he was frighteningly clever at science and math. Their homework had almost always been accomplished as a collaboration. Belle didn’t know how she would deal with college math if he weren’t with her to make it make sense. 

On the tail end of a class-wide groan in response to the teacher’s choice of a thirty-one letter physicist’s name as the last round for the period, the bell rang at last. Belle leaned toward Eamonn, patting the edge of his desk.

“I need your camera,” she said, and he paused in the middle of closing up his work to hand it across to her.

At the front of the room, Miss Novak busily erased and re-drew the game for her next class. “Belle,” she acknowledged cheerfully, bending to make a neat set of blanks beneath the gallows. “Do you need something?”

“I need to talk to you.” Belle waited until the teacher could give her full attention before offering the camera with the photo up on its display. She explained in much the same way Eamonn had told the sheriff, staying calm and matter-of-fact about it.

Miss Novak listened and looked at the picture as Belle reached to zoom it in, showing her what they’d seen. “Oh, honey… I think you should let the police do the looking into this,” she said gently as she handed the camera back, shaking her head. “This isn’t something for you to worry about.”

“It’s not as if we can help worrying,” Belle protested. “Whatever this is-”

“You should be concentrating on graduation!” The teacher smiled, gesturing with a shooing motion. 

Belle refused to let herself be shooed yet. “It’s hard to concentrate when another body turned up this morning.”

“The sheriff’s department is taking care of it,” Miss Novak assured her. “All right? Don’t worry. They’ll catch what’s doing it.”

. ．⋅・˙ට˙・⋅ ．.

She spent the rest of the day in a frustrated sulk. No one who was supposed to help them would listen, and if not even Miss Novak would, then what were the chances with anybody else?

“You know,” Belle began waspishly on the walk home, “all the way through school, we’re told to tell an adult if something is wrong, if we see something bad. Tell an adult, tell a teacher, tell a police officer, and they’ll help you. What was the point of drilling that into our heads if they’re not going to listen when we have something _important_ to tell?”

Beside her, Eamonn walked in silence, apparently watching the ground pass beneath his feet. He had hardly said a dozen words all day. Few of them had been to her. She’d done her best to draw him back out. He hadn’t been doing great, but Berk had to go and make it worse by being a bullying ass right on top of everything else.

“We can’t just let it go,” she said directly to him rather than continuing her vent into the open neighborhood in front of them. “If nobody else is willing to look into what we saw, we have to. Don’t we? Eamonn?”

He shrugged. “You don’t have to do anything.”

On one hand, he’d spoken to her. On the other, that was a little snippy for her taste.

“I was just reluctant to talk to the police about it. I still went. And I talked to Miss Novak. Not that it got us very far,” Belle pointed out.

“If you don’t want to bother with it, don’t.” He crammed his hands into his coat pockets. “Somebody’ll stop whatever’s doing it eventually.”

Eamonn was acting strange even for a bad day. She stopped, grabbing his sleeve to pull him to a halt. “I never said anything about dropping it.”

For the first time all day, he looked at her. The bruise on his cheekbone had grown worse, and something sad and tired settled around his eyes. He was doing a good impression of being dismissive about the whole thing, but it wasn’t in his face.

He shrugged again, his head tilting toward his shoulder with it in a gesture of irritation. “Well, we’re done trying to get anyone with actual authority to help. That was the entire issue, wasn’t it?”

“I haven’t done anything to warrant silent treatment _or_ snark,” Belle said, not understanding why she was getting either. 

Eamonn clenched his hands tight in his pockets. He didn’t have a reason. Not a good one. What he’d had was an entire day that seemed tailored to jab at every soft spot in him, and a ridiculous longing for something he’d never deserve. 

He should keep his mouth shut. Tomorrow he’d have a better handle on himself again. He should bite his tongue and apologize for being an idiot, then just go home and hide in bed for a few hours. And yet. 

“If you want to go to prom, go,” came out of his mouth instead, and he wanted to slap himself as soon as he heard it.

Belle looked at him like he’d grown another head or two. “What?”

His mouth kept going. “Go ahead and accept that invitation. Or ask somebody else. I’ll be _fine._ I don’t need you to babysit me just because it’s prom night, Belle.”

 _“What?”_ she said again, and the look on her face turned into something closer to anger. “I was never going to go anywhere with Berk! I wouldn’t go to prom with him if my life depended on it - I’d rather sit and choke!”

He shifted his gaze down to her feet, this time, almost amazed at how even the way she stood there felt displeased with him. “I’m not stupid. I can tell you want to go. Every time somebody starts talking about it around you, you get a look.”

“If you could tell, why didn’t _you_ say something?” She took a step toward him, grabbing the front of his coat to pull his lapels down away from his chin. “Look at me.”

Eamonn pushed up a little pile of gravel at the end of her driveway with the toe of his shoe. “You don’t want to go with me.”

She crossed her arms, and that made his stomach twist a bit. _Angry, angry._

“You can’t tell me what I want!” she snapped, then scoffed out a breath “You do recall the part where I told Berk no, right? The part where I told him I sure as hell was turning him down?”

He blinked at the road before finally looking at her again. “I don’t… I didn’t hear that.”

“Maybe because you went and shut down as soon as he mentioned-” She bit her lips together and shook her head. 

“You could’ve asked me. If you didn’t mind going, the two of us,” Eamonn said quietly.

“Yeah, I should have just asked your socially inept ass myself.” She huffed a laugh, then sighed at him. “Want to go to prom together?” 

He pulled a hand from his pocket to rake his hair away from his face. The breeze blew it right back across. “If you want to.”

“There’s nobody else I’d go with,” Belle told him. She could hear her own exasperation, but Christ, at least they were talking.

With the first hint of anything like a smile she’d seen on him since the day before, he said, “Okay.”

“Okay.” She gave him a smile in return and grabbed his coat loop, tugging affectionately at it to start them walking again. “We’ll leave at seven. That should give us time to get there before it’s too dark. Do you have a way to get a suit?”

“I’ll figure something out,” he promised. 

“It’ll be nice. Ruby’s supposed to be there to DJ. She won’t let the music fall flat,” she said, happier than she would admit even to herself. She’d been resigned to not going. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to get a date who didn’t turn her stomach, but fact was she _didn’t_ want to go and leave Eamonn home by himself. 

They were nearing the edge of her yard when a howl pierced the quiet cul de sac, startling them both from their preoccupation. Belle’s heart tripped over itself and she pulled Eamonn closer to her, looking toward the narrow piece of forest visible from between their houses. She couldn’t see anything, but she knew that didn’t mean there was nothing beyond the treeline. 

It took a moment before either of them regained enough sense to start moving again, and it was Eamonn who gave her a push toward her house. Their steps were far quicker across the lawn and up the steps. He was right at her back when she opened the door. Another howl rang out as she closed it, audible from inside.

With a vaguely sick expression on his face, Eamonn asked, “We _are_ going to have to do this ourselves, aren’t we?”


	5. Out of the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _(Warning for the F slur in this chapter.)_

There was a car in her driveway. One that wasn’t her father’s, and that hadn’t been there when she went to bed the night before. Eamonn stood next to it, giving it a look of mixed interest and confusion.

She turned to her father. “What is that?”

“I got a good price,” he declared proudly. “It’s got ten or so years on it, but it runs fine. And it’s safe.”

“Dad… We can’t afford this,” she said quietly.

He shook his head. “I intended to get you a car before next fall. These animal attacks going on, though, I don’t like you walking places.” Her father reached into his coat pocket, pulling out a set of keys on a beaten up fob, and gave them to her. “Thought you could drive it to the dance tonight.”

Belle rattled the keys in her hand. She had a car. Freedom on four wheels. But her father had never given her anything without some expectation behind it.

“Thank you, Dad,” she told him with a forced smile that she hoped didn’t look that way before hurrying down the steps toward Eamonn.

The little blue Camry wasn’t bad. It was cute, and she’d seen much worse around town. As long as it got her where she needed to go, she couldn’t find anything to complain about.

Eamonn looked at her sidelong. “What the hell?” he mouthed.

“Surprise? We have a ride to prom?” She gave him another awkward smile. Her second since waking up, and God, she hoped that wasn’t some omen for what the whole day was going to be. She bumped her shoulder into him. “Come on, let’s break her in.”

“Her?” he asked, watching as she rounded the car.

“Well, yeah.” She pressed a button on the fob to unlock the doors, shooting him a real grin over the top before getting in. “Of course it’s a her.”

. ．⋅・˙ට˙・⋅ ．.

Their timing in deciding to go to prom admittedly wasn’t ideal. Belle had thirty dollars to her name, and there was no way she could ask her father to add to it. Even before he turned up with the car, she wouldn’t have asked him to fork out enough for a prom dress. On the evening she and Eamonn discussed going, she had done the only thing she could. She’d texted Ashley.

Ashley Boyd could make beautiful things out of nothing, and it was a miracle she had time to help. She had texted back right away with a message that she knew just what to do, directing Belle to the thrift store for as much cotton lace as she could find. Eamonn helped her scour Brownies Consignment.

Belle sweet talked a pass out of Mrs. Ganse, and she and Ashley worked it out in the home ec building early. Ashley cut a lace dress, two skirts, and a pair of pillow shams apart into swaths of fabric and gave it a quick dye in the washing machine. They dug through the pattern cabinet for something quick but pretty, took a notebook page full of measurements, and she shooed Belle away so that she could ‘work some magic.’ 

The dress didn’t disappoint. During lunch on Friday, Belle stood on a box in the home ec building for adjustments, and Ashley waved off the leftover twenty dollars she tried to pay. 

“Miss Merryweather helped me make a dress when I needed it,” Ashley told her. “I wouldn’t feel right taking money for paying that forward.”

Eamonn was beyond relieved that Moe had to work late. It meant neither of them had to deal with the other while he waited for Belle to come downstairs, and the night wouldn’t start off on a miserable foot. 

The suit he wore came from a second trip to the thrift store - one that he only narrowly managed to keep Belle from knowing about - and he resisted the urge to fidget with his clothes. The owner helped him find something that mostly fit. She was letting him borrow it as long as he promised to bring it back within the week. The lady had done what she could on short notice to make it fit better, including taking the waistcoat and jacket into the back and sewing a new seam up either side of both so he didn’t look like he’d been into his father’s closet. 

He hoped that he looked decent, because Belle was breathtaking. She came clomping down the stairs with her shoes in one hand, holding the hem of her navy blue lace dress up in the other so she didn’t step on it. Halfway down, she looked at him and froze.

“Wow…” he breathed, feeling every kind of insufficient.

Her dropped jaw turned into an open smile. “Right back at you.”

It occurred to Eamonn that he didn’t want her to think he was ogling her just because she’d put on a prom dress and had her hair up. “You’re always pretty,” he blurted before realizing his mouth had gone running with the other half of the thought.

“Thank you,” Belle said without missing a beat. She continued down, stopping with a hand on his shoulder to balance as she slipped her heels on. “We should go on. It’s almost dark out.”

“No. No, I don’t mean no. I mean I have something for you.” He frowned at himself and reached for the banister post, where he’d left a florist’s box. “It’s not much, but-”

She was beaming at him, though. “It’s just right,” she told him, taking the box to pop it open. 

It was only thanks to the generosity of the lady at Brownies that he’d been able to afford the ring corsage at all. He watched as Belle took out the arrangement of miniature pink roses and a tiny bluish-green succulent and put it on her left hand. She admired it for a second before grabbing his arm.

“Okay, now we can go,” Belle said, pulling him toward the door. Before she could reach for the handle, he got it, and he gave her a hesitant look as though he weren’t aware his hand had been planning it. She just squeezed his arm and went out.

She had never thought too much about the safety of her house. They’d never had an intruder or robbery around the neighborhood. She’d never had trouble sleeping. The last week had her checking windows and doors to make doubly sure they were locked, keeping a light on downstairs, sleeping with her phone in her hand. When she and Eamonn left, she kept the porch light on and turned her key in the deadbolt. She might have been a little too daring occasionally, but she wasn’t stupid. Belle glanced around when they crossed the lawn to her car, and she caught him looking, too. They were on the same wavelength, then.

There were a couple of cop cars in the school gymnasium parking lot. It wasn’t that surprising - the sheriff had done his best to talk the school into a daytime prom. Having deputies stationed to keep an eye out was the next best thing, she supposed. 

They could hear Ruby’s music from outside, and there was the dull roar of students just under it. The _inside_ of the gym was an assault on the eyes at first. Someone had decided on a fairy tale theme, bringing together a handful of stories in the space. In one corner, there sat a tower with a waterfall of hair hanging from its window, and the entire far end of the gym had been turned into a panorama of fairy tale castles. Right off, Belle recognized a ‘gingerbread’ cottage behind the refreshments table and an enormous beanstalk towering over the corner set aside for photos. A great, purple dragon made of paper and glitter with a papier-mâché tail and head wrapped around the bleachers off to one side. Silver streamers draped off everything that stood still. When they got past the entryway, she turned to find the wall around the door decorated to look like a pumpkin carriage complete with mice footmen. 

“Clever,” she said with impressed approval. 

When she turned to Eamonn again, he stood with his head tilted back, looking at masses of clear plastic stars that hung from the ceiling. “They went pretty close to all out.”

They drifted past the DJ table, over to a giant bell jar holding a correspondingly sized rose that was rigged somehow with flickering golden lights and mist. It was clearly one of the pieces of decoration the school had rented. Belle, curious beyond holding back, couldn’t resist walking around the shoulder-height thing a bit in an attempt to investigate.

For a while, they stood in companionable silence. It was a condition they were accustomed to, existing in one another’s presence without doing much of anything, exchanging the occasional look or laugh. Miss Blanchard placing herself bodily between students whom she decided were getting too frisky on the dance floor was a particular source of entertainment. Belle suspected the teacher was a little resentful that her boyfriend was outside keeping watch rather than inside helping to chaperone.

Eamonn nudged her between songs. “Do you want punch?”

“Yeah.” She gave him a meaningful look. “Make sure nobody’s gotten any funny ideas with it?”

“I’ll do my best,” he declared with a nod before turning on his heel in the direction of the refreshments.

She rocked a little back and forth to the music that most of the other attendees were dancing to. All three of Merry DunBroch’s brothers came up in turn to ask her to dance. Belle turned each of them down, and they were all polite, but none of them looked particularly surprised with her answer, either. She _did_ want to dance before the night was over. All it took was convincing Eamonn. 

He returned with a cup in each hand. “Jeff swears on his future children there’s nothing in the bowl I got these from.”

Whoever chose the theme did a great job, Belle decided. A slow, lilty song came on and the effect was otherworldly. Dresses glimmered in faux candle and torchlight as the floor filled with couples, chatter dying down in favor of a last romantic moment before the graduating class scattered to the winds. 

Belle was two seconds from asking Eamonn to dance when she happened to look over his shoulder. She hummed in distress.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Uhh.” Her eyes flicked back up to meet his. “I need you to kinda stay calm.”

At that, Eamonn knew what was about to happen. A chill crawled its way up his back before he turned. 

“Eam, honey,” Milah said with such mocking glee it almost physically hurt his ears. “I can’t believe you actually turned up at prom. And I told Killian you wouldn’t show your face.”

He’d seen her boyfriend at a distance a few times. Most of the school had heard about him one way or another. The man had cold blue eyes and a five o’clock shadow, and he looked far closer to his thirties than to twenty. Before he latched onto Milah, he had been trying to get to Marian Maye, who was a freshman at the time, then went after Ariel. He shouldn’t have been on campus, much less attending prom.

“You’re the dickless wonder that couldn’t get it up,” Killian said in amusement.

Belle gave him a disgusted look. “Yeah, no, ‘couldn’t’ implies ‘wanted to.’”

With a smug, nasty smile, Milah stuck her chin out. “Pretty sure begging for it counts as wanting to.”

“Pretty sure you’re lying out your lopsided ass,” Belle said, shifting the same look over to her.

Eamonn forced his eyes away from them. “Belle…” 

“Nothing changes.” Milah gave a derisive laugh. _“Eam_ still needs his bestie to fight his battles for him.”

“I’m not shocked you wouldn’t know anything about loyalty or friendship,” Belle fired off. “You never had a friend you didn’t stab in the back.”

Killian put an arm around his girlfriend, pulling her in closer to his side. “You turn your back, it deserves a knife.”

Belle barely acknowledged him, but even her glance was withering. “Literally no one was talking to you.”

Eamonn tugged insistently at the side of Belle’s dress. He felt the blood leave his face. 

The dismissal hit a nerve with Killian. “Now listen, you half-grown slag-”

“Aww, holding onto mommy’s dress tail?” Milah laughed, more interested in continuing to needle them than in her boyfriend’s ego.

He went on. “I’m not the kind of man you dismiss-”

“You’re still pissed off because your long con bullying didn’t work?” Belle said, deliberately ignoring him. “It’s been over a year. Find something else to dig your talons into already.”

The slow song playing wasn’t loud, and the volume of their confrontation kept going up. People were beginning to stare and it made Eamonn feel ill. He wrapped a hand around Belle’s wrist, trying to get her attention.

“Come dance with me, or let’s leave, or _something?_ Just stop?” he said quietly through his teeth.

“Aren’t you a little coward?” Killian jabbed, leaning close to sneer in Eamonn’s face. “You’re a little fag is what you are.”

The music cut off with a sudden screech of feedback. Ruby stood up, towering over her DJ table to glare down at him. “What the _fuck_ did you just say?”

Miss Blanchard and Mr. Marco were quickly heading their way, but he couldn’t stand it a second longer. Eamonn needed air, needed to get away from the entire encounter. He set his cup on the table before walking out without another word. 

Belle practically vibrated with anger. Anger over the way they’d treated Eamonn, for ruining the one damn dance the two of them had managed to go to, for snickering about it when he had to get away. It boiled over. She threw the rest of her punch at them, giving them both a good splash.

“Belle French!” Miss Blanchard scolded, jogging toward them.

While they gaped at her, Belle ran after Eamonn. She expected him to be just outside, maybe waiting by her car, but she didn’t see him when she got out of the gym. She was at the edge of the parking lot before she found him on the road. Hands crammed into his pockets, he walked toward home, well past the last school streetlight.

“What are you doing?” she called after him as she hurried to catch up. “Eamonn Andrew! Stop!”

She was right on his heels when he did. The look on his face when he turned was one of hurt and resignation, but he only looked at her.

Belle stopped short. “Are you kidding? Just walking off in the dark by yourself? Do you _want_ something to eat your face?”

He pulled his hands from his pockets, gesturing helplessly out from himself as he visibly broke. “You’ve _got_ to stop defending me!” he shouted.

“Why?” she squawked, horrified by the idea that she shouldn’t come to his defense. “Why should I stand there and let them treat you like shit?”

“Because all it does is reinforce what they believe! I’m a coward and a punching bag, and they have every right to treat me like one!” Eamonn stabbed one finger at his chest and the other back in the direction of the school. “You’ve been doing it since second grade. I can tell you exactly how much it’s helped.”

It took Belle a minute of looking and being looked at to react. “I’m sorry. I see you being hurt and my reaction is to protect you.”

“It’s not protecting me.” He deflated a bit, his arms dropping to his sides. “It’s… loading their guns.”

Reaching for him, she took hold of his jacket sleeve, pulling at it affectionately. “We could tell somebody there’s a middle-aged creeper. Get him banned from campus, get her a few mandatory sessions with the counselor?”

If he wanted to go home, they’d go home. It wasn’t worth it to spend the entire evening dodging Milah and her boyfriend. Eamonn almost smiled, and she tugged at him until he took a step with her.

A low snarl reverberated in the darkness. They looked, so near the sound that she could almost feel it growing louder as something came stalking slowly out of the bushes next to them. They were still far enough from the streetlight that it wasn’t unshadowed, near enough they could see as the shape coalesced into a massive wolf.

She should be screaming, she thought. Calling for help. Belle’s heart felt as if it might break her ribs, her skin going hot and cold by turns, and all she could do was grab at Eamonn’s arm, lurching violently away from the side of the road and taking him with her. She stumbled and hit the pavement, landing in mud and water, pushing herself backward in a desperate attempt to get farther away from the thing. Eamonn reached for her. She was still on the ground when the wolf put its head down, coiling itself to attack.

Blinding light flooded over them. The short whoop of a police siren followed, and the sound of someone laying down on the car horn. The wolf bolted. 

Deputy Nolan got out of his cruiser, running to them with a rifle under his arm, pointed to the ground. “You guys all right?”

Belle felt herself reeled quickly to her feet and she looked at Eamonn, holding her by her upper arms. Through her shock, she nodded and answered. “We’re okay.”

“Come on. I’ll give you a ride back,” the deputy told them. “Looks like we’ll be doing a lot of taxiing tonight.”

He ushered them ahead of him, keeping a watch behind as they made their way to the police car. Eamonn opened a back door and gestured her in before him. It was only after they were in that Deputy Nolan took the driver’s seat, turning in the middle of the road and heading back to the school.

“Can either of you give me a description of it?” he asked, looking at them in the rearview mirror.

Belle frowned down at the muddy scrapes on her hands. “Well, I’m a hundred percent on it not being a cat, now.”

“Cat?” Deputy Nolan gave her a curious look in the mirror. “Yeah, that was a wolf.”

“It didn’t come completely into the light,” Eamonn volunteered. “Its fur was dark, though. Probably black.”

“I couldn’t see what color its eyes really were, but they reflected yellow.” She turned to Eamonn. “It was too big…”

The deputy pulled into the parking lot. “Wolves are bigger than you’d think they are.”

“No, I know. We did a section on wolves in environmental science. Mr. Anzo took us on a field trip to a sanctuary in New York. But this was…” She sighed, crossing her arms over her chest. No one _listened._

She directed Deputy Nolan to the far end where she’d parked under a light. He let them out and kept the headlights on them until they were in her car. Belle sat with her hands on the wheel, staring at the shadows moving across the illuminated gymnasium windows.

“Are you really okay?” Eamonn asked after a while.

“I’m good. My house?”

“You fell pretty hard.”

“My butt will survive it,” she said, and she remembered what they were standing out in the road for in the first place. “What about you?”

He shrugged. “Your house. Mine won’t be empty after nine.”

Belle recognized an evasion when she heard one. He was good at them. Cranking the engine, she drove away from the school and toward home. She couldn’t help scanning the roadsides for things that shouldn’t be there. Shapes, movement, eyes. Everything seemed clear all the way back. The entire situation around this wolf and the attacks was terrifying, but there was something rapidly moving beyond weird about it.

As soon as she got out of the car, she felt it. A _wrong_ sort of silence. Stillness. Eamonn must have felt it, too, because he hurried around to stand next to her. 

“We need to get inside,” he said low, nudging her out of being frozen.

She held onto his arm to get across the dark piece of lawn between her car and porch. The silence was broken by something moving in the space between their houses. Leaves and grass crunched. A scrape against the siding echoed into the quiet. It didn’t seem to move closer, but it wouldn’t have to yet. They had to get closer to get into the house.

“Belle-”

“I hear it.”

She remembered Eamonn telling her not to run in the woods. That didn’t ease her instinct to do it, though. He held tight to her arm in return and they walked as calmly as possible up to the porch, climbing steps that seemed to go on forever. She took her keys from his jacket pocket and unlocked the front door with shaking hands. As soon as it was open, they bolted inside. Belle slammed the deadbolt into place before locking the knob, and suddenly it didn’t feel like enough.

Pulling back the curtain on the window next to the door just enough to see, she looked. Nothing had followed them, and there was nothing strange in the yard. “It’s hunting us?”

Eamonn made a scoffing sound from behind her. “Well, it certainly doesn’t like us.”

With the front and back doors locked, they made a separate circuit through the house to be sure that everything else was secure, too. Belle sent him downstairs and ended her checks with her bedroom window. She needed to clean up anyway.

Her dress was ruined. The back was torn and covered with mud, and the pavement had cut her shoes up. They were just garbage by that point. It occurred to her she’d have to clean her driver’s seat in the morning. She changed into pajama bottoms and a t-shirt, pulling her big fisherman’s sweater on over her head before going back downstairs.

She should probably have been freaking out more than she was, she thought. She _was_ freaked out. At the moment, though, she was also angry about what happened at the prom, and angry that this wolf was apparently watching them, and tired of the way things seemed to pile up. It drowned the fright out. Eamonn deserved a break. They both did. 

He was sprawled on the sofa when she walked into the living room, his jacket folded over the back of the recliner her father always sat in, his waistcoat unbuttoned. He’d opened his shirt collar and his tie was coiled up on the coffee table. Even half undone, Belle couldn’t deny how nice he looked all dressed up. 

There was a movie ready to go and he’d had the lovely foresight to bring chips and soda from the kitchen. She dropped down beside him, pulling her feet up to sit cross-legged. Belle’s ears remained pricked for strange noises, and she could tell he did the same. There was too much happening for them to be able to mindlessly enjoy anything. 

The chips disappeared and Eamonn shuffled himself over away from her a bit. She knew what he was at. It had started out a comfort thing after bad nights with his father when they were kids, a habit that hung on as they got older, for better or worse. He laid down on his side with his head in her lap, and she rested a hand on his hair. Maybe it was a comfort thing for her, too.

“I don’t want to go home,” Eamonn muttered as the movie finished.

“Move in here,” she said. “I’ll bring food up for you. You can hide in the closet when my dad comes upstairs.”

He laughed, turning his head to give her a look from the corner of his eye. “I don’t think what worked in fourth grade would work as well now. But thanks for the offer.”

“Consider it an open one.” Belle smiled down at him. She reached for the remote. The sweet, maudlin music over the movie credits annoyed her a little all over again. “We didn’t even get to dance once.”

“I asked you to dance,” he pointed out. “Didn’t seem like you heard me.”

“Oh. I heard that, yeah. Sorry, I was otherwise occupied,” she apologized with a wrinkle of her nose. She hadn’t made things better, but she had trouble holding her tongue. It wasn’t a rare problem.

After a minute or so, Eamonn gathered the courage to tell her, “That offer is still open, too.”

“Okay then, get up.” She patted his back rather insistently. “I want at least one dance on prom night.”

When it sank in that she was serious, he rolled off the sofa onto his knees and stood. He straightened what was left of his suit, waiting while she sat up to the edge and looked through her phone.

Belle wavered between music that she worried was too romantic or too unromantic. She didn’t want to scare him. Just because she felt a certain way didn’t mean she had to foist it off on him when he clearly didn’t. She stuck a couple of songs on a playlist and set her phone on the table. 

The living room was a bit chintzy, mostly olive green and marigold 70s chic. Her father bought the house with the furniture in it. The previous owners had aged to whatever there was past elderly without actually dying, and their son had moved them into a nursing home before selling the house to pay their debts. It certainly wasn’t as fantastic as, say, a fairy tale theme, but it would suffice. 

Eamonn pulled her to her feet when she held her hand out. She put a hand on his shoulder and he rested his hand at her back, bringing the one he held up to his chest. She’d never actually slow danced with anyone before. Not unless her pillow counted. Everything she knew, she knew from movies. The generic prom dance wasn’t that hard, fortunately. They moved their feet in a vague, swaying circle, and it was just fine.

“We should learn an actual dance someday,” she decided halfway through the song.

“I’m okay with how we’re doing,” Eamonn said, enjoying the swaying and having her near, even if it meant nothing close to what he wished it did. Even if it was just the once.

“I want to learn to tango.”

“Jesus, you don’t go easy.”

She beamed up at him. “When have I ever?”


	6. Run

“This is the worst idea.” Eamonn flipped down his messenger bag flap. “In a long history of questionable ideas, this is really, truly a _bad_ one, Belle.”

She dropped her hiking boots to the floor with a solid thump. Sitting down on the side of her bed, she put them on before raking her hair back into a ponytail, pulling the band off her wrist to hold it. She was too silent in the couple of minutes it took her.

Rubbing her hands over her face, Belle sighed. “Emily and Hank Gale.”

The way she said it made him look up. “What about them?”

“Anna sent a mass text before you got here this morning,” she told him. “After the wolf lost its opportunity to get us last night, it caught them out.”

His stomach dropped. The Gales had custody of their niece. “Dorothy?”

“She was still asleep in bed when the sheriff went to check the house,” Belle said, opening her nightstand drawer to take the flashlight from it.

He stepped over to lean against her desk. “Shit. Small favors.”

“It’s going to keep killing.” She slipped the flashlight into the pocket of her coat along with her phone. “Why wait for it to attack us or somebody else again? Why not go after it? We’re the only ones who have seen it the way we have and lucked out to get away alive.”

“It’d be nice to _keep_ getting away alive,” Eamonn remarked. “The police-”

“The police are obviously ineffectual, if they’re doing anything at all to find the wolf.” 

“If they weren’t doing anything, they wouldn’t have been all over the dance last night.”

Belle gave him that look. The one that meant she would go with or without him, and he didn’t want her in the forest looking for that thing by herself. It wasn’t much of a choice. He gave.

“Do you have another flashlight?” he asked with a sigh.

She pulled open her nightstand drawer again and produced another one to toss to him. “We’ll have my car,” she reasoned. “It’ll be right there, easy safe spot if we actually run into anything.”

Eamonn pushed the light into his back pocket. He was nowhere near as convinced about their safety. When she was ready to go downstairs, he followed to the kitchen, watching with interest as she pulled one of the dining chairs away from the table. She dragged it over to the front door and climbed up to stand on it.

“What are you-” he began before she reached up, lifting her father’s hunting rifle down from the rack above the door. “You’re taking the gun?”

Belle handed it to him and hopped down. “What, did you think we were gonna fight it off with mini Maglites?”

He held the rifle while she went back to stock her backpack with water bottles and energy bars. Someone did need to put the wolf down - she was right, there. It was her righteous determination to make them the ones to do it that made him nervous. He took comfort in the doubt they’d actually be able to track the thing.

. ．⋅・˙ට˙・⋅ ．.

They had a few leads, and she wanted to start with the least intimidating. Belle had already looked around between their houses. She _knew_ something had been lurking when they got home the night before, but there was nothing there. No more blood, no marks on the siding or in the grass. No proof.

With Eamonn’s company, she slogged down to the woods behind the cul de sac, where the wolf had gone the night it killed Will. It was an absolute waste of an hour. There was the same amount of nothing there. All they accomplished was crossing the item off her mental list, and it was close to one o’clock when they finally headed toward town.

It only made sense to have a look around the school then. The weekend would make it easy to wander around without interruption. She parked near the bushes where they’d last seen the wolf for themselves. Everything was still a muddy mess, and though she found pawprints in the mud at the roadside, there was no real evidence that anything hung around the immediate area often. Belle and Eamonn followed the prints into the bushes and out the other side, where they disappeared into the grass right away. 

“What a shame,” Eamonn said, giving her a strong side-eye.

She caught him and stuck her tongue out in response. “I have other ideas. This isn’t the end of the line.”

“Had a feeling. Where to next?”

“I want to look around a little more here, first. You never know.”

‘A little more’ turned into an hour and a half of fine-tooth combing over the school’s outer campus, searching for anything that could point them in a direction. He wasn’t sure whether it was fortunate or unfortunate that they only found more nothing. The grounds got so much foot traffic, though, there was no wonder.

It might have been a testament to how bad things were that no one who passed by gave a second glance to Belle carrying a hunting rifle. The general feeling in town was one of hesitance, uncertainty. They could see it in the faces of every person they crossed paths with. Everyone was afraid.

She stuck her hands in her coat pockets, giving the main school building a look before turning to him. “Now the jewelry store.”

Eamonn didn’t say anything. He just cringed internally and returned to the car with her. King Jewelers was around the corner, near the end of the business strip. In the days since Abigail’s death, they - along with the rest of the town - had learned that her body was found in the alley next to her shop. Of course that was right where Belle headed.

The entire area had been cleaned up. Despite the rain that had fallen between then and now, he could still smell bleach. It was disconcerting to say the least.

She barged right ahead, but he hovered at the alley entrance. “Is this not a little ghoulish?” 

“We’re investigating,” she justified, bringing out her flashlight and clicking it on. “We’re doing what’s necessary for finding this thing. It’s not ghoulish.”

He went in after her, scanning around the margins of the alley without knowing what he was looking for. Something strange enough and he would know it, he supposed. 

Belle walked through, leaning down with her flashlight sweeping across the shadow between buildings. She’d reached the end and opened her mouth to tell Eamonn that they may as well go, when something shiny glinted back her. Squatting down, she poked at it, but it was stuck hard in a crack in the concrete just around the corner, technically at the back of the shop.

“Do you have your knife?” she asked over her shoulder. When he stepped up behind her, she stood and gestured at the ground. “There’s something stuck there.”

Eamonn took his pocket knife out and thumbed it open. He bent over, and before she knew it, she was staring at the way his jeans went taut across his backside. She tilted her head, pinching her lower lip between her teeth. Catching what she did, she snapped her eyes shut. _Ogling_ him. She was awful. Besides which, they were in the place where Abigail died, and it was too weird there. Even if it was a nice eyeful. 

“It’s a button,” he said.

She opened her eyes. “Huh?”

“You all right?” he asked, standing and turning to face her as he folded the knife closed against his thigh before slipping it back into his pocket.

“Yeah. I’m good.” She shrugged. “You said it’s a button?”

He opened his hand, letting a small piece of brass roll from his palm to his fingers so that she could take it. “Probably got stuck during the clean-up.”

Belle frowned down at the button, holding it under the beam of her flashlight. There was something familiar about it. You didn’t see brass buttons too often anymore.

“Find something?” asked an exasperated voice from the street end of the alley.

They nearly jumped out of their skins, whipping around to find Sheriff Humbert there watching. Belle’s hand closed around the button. 

The sheriff walked the length of the alley to approach them. “If you’ve found evidence that was missed, you have a responsibility to turn it in.”

She thought about denying it, but she didn’t know how long he’d been there. “Can I at least take a picture of it?”

“Be quick,” he said. He scratched the stubble at one side of his jaw with the opposite hand, clearly waiting.

Belle snapped a photo of the button on her palm with her phone before handing it over to the sheriff. It didn’t matter, she decided. A picture was enough. There was no detail on the brass anyway.

He pulled a plastic baggie from the inside of his jacket and had her drop the button directly in, pocketing it as he leveled a look at them. “What are you two doing out here?”

“Looking,” she replied.

“You should be home,” he told them. “Let the people who are equipped take care of this.”

She stuck her hands into her coat pockets and pointed out obstinately, “There’s no curfew during the day.”

Eamonn cut in before she could dig herself a hole she couldn’t get out of. “Have you made progress on finding it?”

“Some,” Sheriff Humbert offered. “Deputy Nolan told me about your run-in with the wolf last night. He assured me you were both okay.”

“We are.” Belle quite nobly restrained herself from making a smart remark about Maine coons.

Sheriff Humbert sighed. He gave the rifle barrel visible over her shoulder a pointed look, and he turned to go. She knew the _only_ reason he didn’t say anything was because he was the one whose gun safety class she’d attended three summers in a row, so he knew good and well she was aware how to be responsible with it.

“Be careful,” he called back at them without looking. “Better yet, go home.”

She waited until she saw the police car pass on the street beyond the alley’s exit before muttering, “They probably haven’t found anything. It’s not like he’d tell us if he had.”

“He was never going to tell a couple of teenagers anything relevant,” Eamonn said from behind her.

The next place she’d planned for them to take a look around was the Gale farm. She wanted to go, but she felt the slightest bit reluctant. Maybe it _was_ a little weird, since the Gales had just been found this morning. 

“I need a bathroom,” she announced. “And I wouldn’t mind some cocoa. Let’s go by Granny’s before we go out to the Gales’ place?”

It was a bit of procrastination. Eamonn agreed, though, and she stopped to lock her father’s gun in the trunk of her car before they crossed the street to the diner. They took seats at the counter and she drank her hot cocoa so slowly that there was nothing hot about it by the time she made it down to the last few sips. 

The Gale farm was out of the way, a good ten minute drive outside of the main part of town. When they arrived, Belle had to park near the end of the driveway. Police tape had been attached to trees and stakes driven into the ground to create a perimeter around most of the front yard. 

“A normal person would take that as the sign it’s meant to be to stay out,” Eamonn hinted as she retrieved the rifle. 

“Yeah,” she said, bringing the gun sling up onto her shoulder. She gave him a smile and slammed the trunk shut. “A normal person.”

They ducked under the tape to walk closer to the farmhouse. Blood soaked almost the width of the gravel driveway near the front steps. The rocks still glistened with it in the humidity, and the sharp, coppery, raw meat smell was enough to make her stomach turn.

“Poor Dorothy,” Eamonn murmured, giving the stain a wide berth. He wrapped his arms around himself. “She’s been orphaned all over again. Where’s she going to go?”

Belle shrugged. “Lurline and Pastoria Ozwin take in fosters when it’s needed. They’ll probably get her, at least for a while.”

He tore his eyes away from the blood to start looking around in the grass, just in case something had been overlooked. The police had missed the button Belle found - the chances they could have missed more seemed pretty good. He wondered what the Gales were doing outside. Why had they gone out after curfew, leaving their niece in bed the way they did? Had they heard or seen something? The wolf had overpowered two people this time. Neither Emily nor Hank Gale was exactly frail, but remembering the size of the animal he and Belle had seen, he didn’t doubt it could have taken them down easily.

“There’s blood here, in the grass,” she said from the other side of the driveway. 

Eamonn crossed the drive to go along with her, because of course she went off in pursuit. Walking slowly, they followed the streaks until the blood dissipated into more and more infrequent smudges that finally faded to nothing before they reached the woods that surrounded the farm at a fair distance. She took out her flashlight.

“You’re not going in there?” he said, and he knew it was a dumb question as it left his mouth.

Belle gave him a sarcastic look. “What, like I’m going to go wandering into unfamiliar woods? Come on.”

He reflected the look right back at her. She was gearing up to do precisely that.

“Okay, I’m not going _far_ into unfamiliar woods,” she corrected, clicking the light on. “I won’t even lose sight of the house. I promise.”

Eamonn followed her, because that was what he did. To the ends of the earth if he had to. Or wolf-infested woods, which apparently came first.

They walked from one side of the surrounding forest to the other, keeping just inside the treeline, as she’d promised. The search took them the better part of two hours, owing to the expanse of the forest around the farm and the lack of speed they went at. Neither of them found anything of interest - to his relief, to her disappointment. 

“Maybe it… took another path, I don’t know,” he suggested.

“There’s no way an animal that big just disappears without a trace,” Belle said as they at last stepped back onto the open field between the woods and the house. “There’s no way.”

. ．⋅・˙ට˙・⋅ ．.

They sat in the car with the inside light on, eating the peanut butter energy bars she brought along. Belle left her boots on the floor and pulled her sock feet up to prop them against the dash. She’d driven them back into town and parked down from the hardware store just in case the sheriff or one of his deputies decided to drop by the farm, not wanting to deal with more cops today.

“Let’s go out to the well,” she said around a mouthful of granola as she opened her backpack zipper just enough to poke a couple of foil wrappers in.

Eamonn stopped mid-bite to eye her. “Bad idea,” he worried aloud again.

“Maybe, but that’s the only place we know for certain it’s been that we haven’t gone back to look.”

“For good reason.”

She turned in her seat a little and leaned back against the headrest. “We’ve never been afraid to go out there before.”

“There’s never been an actual wolf going around murdering people before.” His expression grew more incredulous, if it were possible.

“You say ‘murdering’ like it’s targeting specific people.”

“Did you forget _how_ many times that thing has come after us?”

“I don’t want to be driven away from our well. It’s not fair to watch one more thing being taken.”

“I know. It’s not forever. Just ’til the wolf’s been dealt with.”

Belle’s mouth set into a line. “Well. Won’t be long, then.” 

She took her feet down from the dash and leaned at an awkward angle to put her boots back on. Eamonn knew it hadn’t mattered what he said - when she had her mind set on something, there was no unsticking it. And since where she went, he went, he simply pulled his seatbelt down and clicked it into place. 

Giving her laces a hard tug, she tied them off tight and sat up to look at him. “We have flashlights, a gun, and a car. We’ll be just fine,” she said and started the engine.

There was absolute determination in every move Belle made, from putting the car into drive to passing Mr. Clark, the pharmacist, when he tootled along too slowly for the current state of her patience. Getting to the well by road was far more roundabout compared to the shortcut they usually took. The trip around the block and down what turned into a dirt road after a hundred yards or so gave Eamonn too much time to think about how profoundly unwise it was to go walking into woods where they knew with all certainty the wolf had been. He looked up at the ceiling of the car and wondered just how hard he would have to feign illness to get her to turn around.

“I think I can get a little closer,” Belle said, breaking his grim train of thought. She slowed the car as they turned onto a wide gravel turnaround at the end of the road, stopping a short way on the grass to one side of it. “I don’t want to get us stuck. The well’s almost straight through from here, anyway.”

She took her backpack from between her feet as she got out to open the back door and get the hunting rifle. Eamonn fell into step beside her, making their way across the soggy grass between the car and treeline. The forest had never before felt threatening. There were always the stories passed around, but they were stories - nothing remotely like the deaths the town had seen over the past couple of weeks. He understood Belle’s anger that the woods had suddenly become something to fear.

They made it through to the well with no trouble at all. He couldn’t help the nagging awareness of how low the sun was getting, though. 

Belle stopped just beside the well and turned to him, holding out her hand. “Let me see your camera?”

He opened one side of his bag to take his camera out, and she brought up the pictures he’d taken the last time they were there, flipping through to the eyes reflecting in the background. Using it, they figured out just where the wolf must have been at the moment he caught the picture. 

“That’s where we’ll go in,” she said as she handed his camera back.

“Because that’s the safest thing to do,” he retorted, putting it away and latching his bag. “Going in right where we know it stood watching us.”

Belle adjusted the rifle so that she could bring it more easily to her shoulder if necessary, and they crossed the treeline at the far side of the clearing. They lost most of what little light remained when they went in. She took out her flashlight to shine ahead of them and he followed suit. 

“Could be its den is in here somewhere, since this is the only place we happened across it instead of the other way around,” she theorized out loud.

He kept pace with her as she walked deeper in, worried that she might get out of reach. “But we’re hoping it’s not. Right?”

“Yeah. It’s probably not,” she said with a distinct undertone of pacifying him.

Eamonn felt _watched._ It was a dreadful sensation. His skin crawled as they looked into the dim growth, their flashlights shining shakily around. He followed her around a big oak and the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

“Belle?” he said.

She hummed in reply and followed with a, “Yeah?”

“It’s getting pretty dark.”

“Sure is.”

He cleared his throat in an attempt to get her full attention. “What about the curfew?”

“What about it?” she asked, being deliberately obtuse.

Eamonn gave her a fretful look that she didn’t see because she concentrated on poking at a fallen limb with the toe of her boot. “Maybe we should get out of here soon?”

She climbed over the limb, squatting down to take a closer look at the mud on the other side of it. “We will.”

He went around to stand next to her, intent on staying close with night quickly closing in around them. There was a sound like something heavy hitting the ground. The crush of soil, the sliding of wet leaves. Eamonn startled and Belle jolted up to her feet, bumping into him and leaning to keep in contact. He couldn’t tell which direction it came from. 

“Okay. This is the worst idea you’ve had that I’ve gone along with,” he reiterated once more, keeping his voice low.

She laughed nervously. “Worse than the tarantula from the sixth grade field trip?”

“So much worse.”

“All right. Home. You can make us some grilled cheese.”

He held back a sigh of relief. “Happy to, as long as it’s indoors.”

Footsteps. Something moved through the forest floor detritus, twigs creaking underfoot, and they both went still. He didn’t realize how everything around them had gone silent until all he could hear was her frightened breathing and his own. There was a deep huff of breath from something that wasn’t them.

Eamonn felt as if someone poured hot water right down his back. Belle turned, pushing him around with her, and her flashlight passed across a mass that seemed to absorb the light before she took the beam back. She sucked in a horrified gasp and he grabbed her upper arm. The light cast across the creature trembled with her.

It bared its teeth in a broad, rumbling snarl. The wolf was _enormous._ It could easily level out to his chest, if its head weren’t lowered. Moving, it started circling to their right, and they turned to keep it in sight.

Eamonn began to back slowly away, pulling Belle along by the arm he held. He gradually slipped his messenger bag strap off over his head with his other hand to hold it doubled near the top of the pouch. 

Her breath shook as she whispered, “I- I need you to put your light on it.”

He stopped, letting go of her arm to lift his flashlight, and hers was smothered when she dropped it into her coat pocket. She brought the rifle up. Her hand flexed before she placed her finger on the trigger.

The gun jammed and the wolf feinted toward them with the click, snapping its jaws with a crack of bone against bone. 

_“Fuck,”_ Belle gasped, “No, no.” It wasn’t going to let them walk out of the woods this time. “Eamonn…”

“Put your backpack down,” he told her, knowing it held upwards of ten pounds of books. When she let it fall to the ground at their feet, he whispered back to her, “Run.”

Belle bolted as hard as she could. The wolf started after her. Eamonn slung his bag at it, aiming low, hitting it mid-stride. Its legs tangled in the strap and he ran an instant after Belle did, hoping he’d delayed the wolf enough that they might have a chance.

He couldn’t turn to look back. He knew it would slow him if he did. The wolf barrelled through to forest after them. Sounds of branches thrashing, animal feet pounding against wet ground, snarling and gnashing followed them. 

Belle had never felt relief like the moment she broke out of the forest within sight of her car. Her boots skidded on the grass and she hit the car with her hands before she finished coming to a stop. She threw the passenger door open and clambered inside, leaving it wide because there was no chance in hell she would close it when Eamonn wasn’t safe. She’d barely gotten in when he crossed the treeline with the wolf on his heels, less than ten feet behind him. Clamping her hands over her mouth, she could feel herself screaming into them, terrified she would have to watch it overtake him.

He threw himself through the open car door and slammed it, colliding with her knees because she’d only managed to make it to the middle, and she grabbed hold of the back of his coat with both hands as though she could make sure he was okay by holding onto him. They were plunged into darkness again, openly panicked breathing loud in their ears.

The car shook when the wolf hit it, bringing yelps from them both. She couldn’t see out, and she was afraid to turn the inside or headlights on, afraid to see it clawing after them, but they had to get out of there. Belle fumbled for her keys in her coat pocket, not feeling them right away, and she had a flash of fear that she’d dropped them in the woods. There was a nauseating screech of claws on metal. Eamonn’s head was down, his hands pressed violently over his ears. They were jarred with every slam the wolf took into the car and she wondered wildly whether it would stand up to the attack. 

She found her keys. She had to force herself to turn and sit up straight in the driver’s seat so that she could find the ignition. The wolf rammed into her side of the car and she heard glass crack just before the key slotted in and she cranked the engine. It was beside her. Snarling, growling, clawing at her window when the headlights came on. She put the car in reverse and stood on the accelerator, first just needing to _get away._

The car fishtailed as she fought with the wheel, trying to find enough road to follow back to town. She drove like all hell, her eyes flicking to the rearview mirror too often. It was by some miracle that she didn’t cross paths with any of the patrols out. 

Pulling up in front of her house was surreal. As if they hadn’t just been in the forest, as if they weren’t chased out of it by something that had killed four people. They sat, stunned, for she didn’t know how long, until she thought to shut the car off. She drew a breath to speak and turned to Eamonn.

“We should go in. My dad’ll be home soon.” She could hear the flatness of her own voice.

“Mine’s there,” he said quietly.

Belle looked over to see Malcolm’s old black Cadillac sitting in the driveway, parked at an odd angle. She hoped he was already passed out drunk. Their evening had been awful enough. Eamonn didn’t need any extra misery from his father on top of it. 

After another minute or two of delaying it, they went their separate ways with warnings of ‘be careful’ and an exchange of demands to let one another know the other was okay. She was gladder than ever that she’d taken to leaving her porch light on. Belle waited until she could see that he had gotten his door open before she went in and locked up after herself.

Pulling the dining chair over again, she replaced the hunting rifle above the front door. She’d rather her father not know she had taken it. She dragged the chair back to its place at the kitchen table, and she couldn’t help the compulsion to check the front door locks once more before heading for her room. It wasn’t until she was halfway up the stairs that she thought of her backpack again, but she couldn’t regret leaving it. She would never have been able to get to the car so quickly if she kept it. Eamonn telling her to put it down had probably saved both their lives.

A howl broke through the quiet of the house, somewhere too, too close by, and a painful chill flashed through her. Tears sprang to her eyes. She didn’t remember sitting down, but she found herself holding so tightly to the rail that her hand hurt, curled small against the balusters. 

Even through the fear, she knew. They had to stop it. _Whatever_ they did, they had to stop it.


	7. Beyond Doubt

She thought maybe the fear would lessen once her father got home from work, once she wasn’t alone in the house. It didn’t. Belle couldn’t stand it. She wanted Eamonn back.

It took all of her self-control to wait until her father had gone to bed before she texted Eamonn again. _“I’m scared. Please come over?”_

 _“Roof?”_ he responded after a couple of seconds.

 _“Yeah,”_ she texted back right away. _“And be quiet.”_

She turned the lock on her window and lifted it open in time to see him climbing carefully out. He waited near the edge while she went out onto her own roof. Belle crawled around to the right side of the dormer, taking a metal ladder off the hook securing it. The ladder was a fixture there and had been since they were kids, for convenience sake, for times when sitting apart wasn’t enough. Bad days, particularly good days, plotting together. Today was somewhere light years beyond a bad day.

Kneeling up, she stood the ladder on its end and let it tip toward Eamonn. He caught and lowered it, making a bridge between their roofs. After giving it a shake to check stability, he started making his way slowly across.

Eamonn loathed the ladder. Heights filled his stomach with wasps. He couldn’t find it in him to complain this time, though. Crawling over it, rung by rung, he tried to keep his eyes on her instead of looking down. He made it over to her and returned the ladder to its hook himself before following a very somber Belle back through her window.

Her room had always felt like a whole separate world. Where his was what she’d once kindly called ‘spartan,’ hers was a comforting and controlled clutter that smelled like scented candles and fabric softener. The lefthand wall from the window was nothing but bookcases with fairy lights strung on them and on the wall over them like some altar to a goddess of libraries. Books overflowed her shelves to take up residence in piles on almost every surface. Her desk was a given, but her dresser, the little table that held her TV, the chest at the foot of her bed, all held stacks. Often even her bed itself wasn’t spared. Her nightstand was home to multiple small towers of everything from texts on astronomy to Australian history to romance novels. Her borrowed research material on wolves sat next to the lamp.

She dropped down onto her bed, bringing her knees up to rest her chin on them, and he sat on the edge near her. “Wasn’t enjoying it over there by myself too much, either,” he told her.

“Do you think it really beat us home?” she asked, hugging her legs.

“Sounded like it?” He frowned at his hands before pressing them together between his knees. “That’s pretty damn fast, though.”

Belle fought down a shiver. There’d only been a couple of howls before everything went eerily silent again, but they were more than chilling enough. She didn’t want to say what she was thinking. Even thinking it made her anxious.

“Where’s your dad?” Eamonn asked, glancing to the door.

“Gone to bed a while ago.” She understood his look. Her father would crap himself if he knew Eamonn were in her room at this time of night. She unfolded herself, going to her door to turn the lock on the knob. “Yours?”

“Living room floor, last I saw,” he muttered.

She plopped onto the bed, sitting on her foot. “Might be for the best.”

“At least I didn’t have to deal with him.” He shrugged and ducked his head, making his hair fall forward. “Do you still want that grilled cheese?”

“Not right this second, no, probably not.” She laughed a little that he offered now. “Not really hungry, anyway.”

“I couldn’t eat anything, either,” Eamonn admitted. 

They sat in the relative quiet of her room with the soft whirr of her laptop on her desk, the shush of the furnace through the vents, her bent knee barely touching his hip where he perched on the side of her bed. Her chest felt heavy with awareness of what had almost happened to them. She felt better with him there, safer, though nothing had changed outside of him moving perhaps twenty feet closer to her. Everything was better somehow when he was with her.

She couldn’t stop thinking how they could so easily have been killed. Not just tonight, but when she followed him out of the dance, too. The wolf terrorizing their town seemed to hunt as freely as it liked, getting bolder with every attack, showing no sign of letting up. And she couldn’t stand the thought that something awful could happen to either of them without ever telling him.

Belle leaned forward to rest her forehead against his shoulder, working on drawing a different sort of bravery from the contact. She felt him move after a few moments, slight at first, until one of his hands slid away from the other. He brought his arm around her, resting his hand open wide over the middle of her back, giving her a comforting pet with the smallest movements. The bit of body heat that soaked through her shirt from his palm to her skin was more warmth than she’d known in days. It gave her the push she needed to move, herself, and she reached out to curl her hand around the one he still kept pinned between his knees. 

His hand at her back stopped. She lifted her head from his shoulder, hoping to find him looking back at her. His expression was one more like she’d jabbed him with something than taken his hand. Belle drew it over to her so that he had to turn. He finally looked at her, brown eyes wide and bewildered, and she thought for an instant that she wouldn’t go through with it before she leaned up to kiss him.

Eamonn’s lips were warm, just parted in his surprise, and she held there for a few almost chaste seconds. He gave a soft gasp that she felt as much as heard when she stopped. Belle rested her forehead against his, feeling the thump of her heart all the way through her.

“Why?” He breathed the word so near her lips that she felt him move.

She pulled back to see him. His eyes were still closed. “Why?” she repeated.

It took her a second to understand what was going on with his question and the agonized expression on his face. The bullshit with Milah had thrown him. Belle had dealt with the fallout from it - the betrayal of finding out he’d been misled and manipulated, that Milah hadn’t been serious for a moment of the months she strung him along, the horror of that viper spreading the video she’d made on her phone of her mocking effort to make him sleep with her. He had been so broken by it, it had given Belle nightmares of him hurting himself and being the one to find him. And she couldn’t be sure how much was there that he hadn’t allowed her to see. She had a feeling his reaction stemmed from exactly there. 

“I love you.” She let go of his hand, reaching up to touch his cheek. “Because I love you. Like this.”

Eamonn couldn’t help tilting into her touch. She was still so close when he opened his eyes, looking right at him, and the thing was, it wasn’t even a new look. Belle had looked at him that way for years. He’d taken it for a different sort of exasperation with him.

This was Belle. She had never lied to him. Not when it came to important things. She’d never taken advantage of him, never made him feel stupid or worthless. In spite of fear that might actually have been worse than that he felt when the wolf was after them, he leapt.

“I can’t remember not loving you,” he told her quietly, trying not to sound as though it took more courage than he really had to get the words out.

She smiled. Bright and open and _happy,_ the kind that made him wish he had everything to give her, and she was directing that smile at him.

He leaned in and she closed the rest of the distance, kissing him again. There was more eagerness to her kiss this time - in the way she pressed up into him, in the way she brought her hands to rest in the curve between his neck and shoulders. Feeling a touch of her tongue to his lower lip, he thought he might swallow his own. 

Eamonn put his arms around her and held onto handfuls of the back of her shirt, holding on as if she were going to disappear. He loved her so much it hurt his insides. She’d been his world for twelve of the last nineteen years, and the chance that she loved him back was earth shattering. 

Belle rose up onto her knees, trying to keep their kiss going at the same time. She had only daydreamed about it a thousand times. What he would feel like, what he would taste like, his breath on her face and his hands on her skin, a little bit ashamed of herself for thinking of her best friend in such a way. The reality of it was _so_ much better than she’d imagined. 

He was solid under her hands, sweet and wanting, and she wanted more of him. What she didn’t want was to be afraid anymore. Eamonn was the opposite of fear. He was comfort and surety. He was all things good. She needed him as close as she could get him right now.

Slipping her hands from his shoulders to the inside of his shirt collar barely meant moving. She pushed his golden orange buttondown back and off his shoulders, for now leaving him the dark red t-shirt he had on underneath. He didn’t move to free his arms.

“Mm-” he hummed instead before breaking the kiss, giving her another baffled expression. “What are you doing?”

Belle hesitated, a little wary that she was pushing him too far too fast. “…What do you think I’m doing?”

“Taking my shirt off?”

“For a start, yep.”

Without waiting for anything else to come out of his open mouth, she reached for her own t-shirt, making it necessary for him to release the cling he had on her as she pulled it off. She knelt next to him in her jeans and plain white bra, looking for a reaction. He gave her one in the form of flicking his eyes downward, away from her chest.

Eamonn felt his face go hot. Her fingers were almost cool when she touched beneath his chin to bring his gaze back up. 

“You can look,” she told him with a grin as she began trying to help him out of his shirtsleeves. “I want you to look.”

When his hands were freed, she reached behind her. With a soft click, her bra was suddenly no longer tight against her body, and he watched with something like fascination as she let it slide down her arms. Regardless of her permission, he felt like he should look away. He hadn’t seen that many breasts in his life, but Belle was… Belle. She was perfect. Impulsiveness notwithstanding.

“Belle?” he began out of some kind of mild hysteria, not at all sure what to do after he said her name.

She took his hand, bringing it up and turning his palm toward her to cup her breast. “You can touch, too,” she told him encouragingly.

An odd look crossed her face and her hand tightened over top of his against her. He swallowed hard, doing his best to keep up despite the situation in his jeans. He’d have given anything to hold onto the way she looked at him, though. 

“Eamonn…” Belle licked her lips, trying to gauge how he felt about what they were doing. If he was reluctant, if he didn’t want to, she had jets to cool and apologies to offer. “Do you want to do this?”

He nodded, barely a motion. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Yes.”

Smiling, she grabbed the sides of his shirt, hauling it up and over his head. He made a sound like a choked laugh from inside before she could get it off of him, and he smiled back up at her when she saw his face again. His smile was one of the most beautiful things she knew. She saw far too little of it. 

Holding onto his t-shirt for a moment, she asked, “How would you feel about having it all off?” 

“I mean, it’d probably help?” he answered her a bit shyly before pushing his sneakers off with a thump onto her bedroom floor.

While he bent to get rid of his socks, she sat back and wriggled out of her jeans, reaching to help him with his own when he straightened up again. The combination of surprise and arousal in his features when she took his zipper down was definitely going to be a treasured memory. He stood just long enough to get his jeans down and off, leaving him in a pair of bright purple boxers that Belle couldn’t help lingering over the backside of before he sat down again. 

An old cigarette burn scar, a silvery pink mark on the back of his right shoulder courtesy of his father years ago, caught her eye. She’d been the one to help him clean it up. It wasn’t something a pair of eighth graders should have had to do.

Belle put her hands on his shoulder, pushing him forward enough that she could lean to press a kiss over the small scar. She heard him draw a sharp breath in response. He ducked his head again, keeping her from seeing his face when she leaned away.

She cradled a hand against the cheek he kept turned from her, touching but not forcing him to look up. “I want this,” she told him, dropping another kiss on the cheek nearer her. “I’ve wanted this for so long.”

Belle willed him to believe her. He seemed unsure of himself - not in the least unusual for him. She knew how strongly believed he was ugly, stupid. She also knew precisely whose fault that was. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. And there was no face that made her happier than his.

He turned on his own after a moment, laying a hand first on her bare knee before moving it to rest against her side. She could see him working out what _he_ wanted to do. His thumb stroked over the skin at her waist as though he were making sure she existed. It took him a little longer to lean in, and she stayed right where she was, letting him come to her. Eamonn kissed her this time, as restrained as the first she’d given him, brushing his nose against hers as he pulled back. He kissed her again, and again, short, sweet kisses that made a soft sound of parting with each. And she could feel it in them - that he wanted her, too. That he wasn’t just going along with her. 

She brought her hands up to his chest, resting them there for a few seconds and one more kiss before she pushed gently. He tried to follow her mouth as she moved, and she smiled at him when he opened his eyes.

“Wait, wait.” She squirmed to get her knees under her again. 

Belle caught the elastic of her panties with her thumbs and began pushing them down. She went slowly, making it gradual and sexy. Or putting a good attempt in. With her underwear around her knees, as she shifted to try and get in a position to take them off, she lost her balance in the soft mattress. Belatedly, it occurred to her that she should have just stayed sitting instead of trying to be all sultry. Feeling silly, she sat and pulled her panties off her feet to drop them off the side of the bed.

It seemed Eamonn hadn’t noticed her wobble. He was fairly distracted by her lack of underwear, and he’d gone a rather pleasing shade of pink around his ears and cheeks. His eyes ran slowly up until he got to her face. She bit her lip to keep from grinning too broadly at his deer-in-headlights look.

Taking one of his hands to pull him along, she pushed herself back toward her pillows. “Here,” she said, knowing if she didn’t give him some direction that they might never get there. “I want you to touch me.” Belle brought his hand up between her thighs. “Touch me here.”

His breath stuttered, but he tried. He touched the dark auburn curls there with his fingertips. She’d watched his long, clever fingers do so many things - everything from fiddling with lab equipment to dabbing peroxide on her knees when she had been determined to learn to skate on the lake. Belle whimpered when he finally grazed along a far more sensitive spot.

“What did I do?” he asked with a look of concern, going still.

“No, no, good sound,” she assured him. “Don’t stop.”

Slowly, shallowly, he slipped one finger inside her. She nodded, telling him a soft, “Keep going,” and he added a second.

Her head dropped back onto the pillow, her heart pounding in her ears. She’d touched herself before plenty of times, but having Eamonn’s hands on her was vastly different. His touch was careful and tentative, and while she appreciated the care he took, she wanted a bit more. Wrapping her hand around his wrist, she took him past his hesitation, helping him slide his fingers all the way inside until his palm cupped over her. He froze for a second before moving again, and she felt his hand shake as he stroked in and out. 

The heel of his thumb rubbed against her and she shuddered. Just the fact of him touching her had her close. 

“Eamonn,” she said, making him meet her eyes. “Do you have a condom?”

A startled, despairing look crossed his face. 

“The condoms they handed out in health?” Belle reminded.

“It’s in my wallet. In my bag,” he told her. 

There was no use at all in lamenting that. She just opened her nightstand drawer. Hers was under the little logbook she kept there for her college savings. When she handed him the clear plastic wrapped condom, she could practically see him recalling the health class lesson about putting them on. 

After watching him for a moment, she prompted gently, “Take your underwear off.”

Maybe he’d learned from her failed attempt, but he stood to push his boxers down without any fanfare. Bruises were starting to color on his left hip where he’d hit her knees getting into the car. He frowned in concentration as he opened the condom and rolled it on, sitting back down when she reached for him.

“It’s okay,” Belle said, her hand cradled along the angle of his jaw.

She leaned back, taking him with her so that when she steepled her legs, he knelt between them. The deer look was on his face again. 

“You still want to?” she asked, needing to make absolutely certain before they did something that couldn’t be taken back.

Moving forward to rest on his hands over her in response, Eamonn brought his face near enough hers to brush their noses and lips together. “More than anything.”

He’d sat on her bed hundreds of times. Playing, talking, homework. How had he only just noticed how soft her blue and white and yellow quilt was, how much more ‘home’ her room was than his, how she looked at him? 

“Come down more,” she whispered up to him, patting at the bend of his elbow. “I want you where I can feel you.”

After a few seconds of awkward thought about how to give Belle what she wanted, he rested his forearms on the mattress inside of her upper arms. Her breasts pressing against his chest took the breath out of him. Slipping a hand between their bodies, he tried to align himself with her, and his profound lack of experience prevented him from getting anywhere. 

Belle had to reach down to help when he didn’t do well with his aim. She made a quick little sound as soon as she got it right.

She smiled up at him, saying again, quietly, “It’s okay. Keep going.”

He began easing forward as carefully as he could, but with her heels against his backside, she pulled him into her. And just like that, they were both breathless, foreheads leaned together, breathing one another’s air in small, overwhelmed puffs. His head spun. The feeling surrounded him, washed through every cell of him. She was warmth and closeness and _home._

He wasn’t sure how this was happening. Maybe he’d been killed in the forest. Maybe his dying brain was trying to console him. Belle’s hand caught around the back of his neck, though, very real. She wrapped her legs around him, and he felt her thighs pressed tight to his sides, felt her blue striped socks along his calves. She was so soft against him. The way his hips fit with hers, no dream could ever have gotten it this right.

It didn’t last long, but Belle didn’t expect it to. She just wanted to hold onto him for as far as they could make it. Her free hand went down between them again, and she hurried herself along. Eamonn took a little while to begin moving - that in itself gave her a chance to enjoy the feeling of being full of him, of his weight on top of her. When he did move, _God,_ it sent a whole new set of emotions through her. Tears tried to sting her eyes and she had to will them away, afraid they’d terrify him at this point. She stroked her fingers through the ends of his hair, almost mirroring the motions of her other hand. It was his reaction, his face open with soft shock when he finished, that sent her over the edge in nearly the same moment. 

She understood why it was called ‘afterglow.’ Everything was just… bliss. If she could have kept the two of them there forever, Eamonn lying between her legs and looking at her with adoration in his dark eyes, she’d have been tempted. She petted down the back of his neck, hoping he’d stay where he was for a little longer.

“I’m squishing you,” he said too soon.

Belle shook her head. “You’re fine where you are.”

He shifted his weight to roll off her, though. They laid side by side, his arm over top of hers, catching their breath. She tilted her head to rest against his shoulder and smiled to herself. The last few minutes were nearer perfect than anything she’d ever had, she thought.

As much as she hated to move, they had to. Stupid practicalities. “You need to take the condom off.”

“Where do I put it?” He raised his head to look down at himself. 

“Take it off and I’ll take care of it,” she told him, sitting up to lean and drag her wastebasket closer to the bed. 

She watched as he eased the bit of pink latex off. Taking it by the rim, she wrapped it in a few tissues from the box on her nightstand and threw it away, hiding it beneath an empty cookie packet. She’d need to take the whole bag out when her father wasn’t home.

“Sorry I didn’t-” he began, pulling a sheepish face. “It didn’t last as long as I thought-”

Belle turned back to him, lying down and snuggling in beside him. He put his arm around her as she did. “It was just right. Maybe it’ll last longer next time, when we’re not both so keyed up. But this was wonderful,” she reassured him. “For our first time being together.”

He blinked. “Next time?”

“There can be a next time,” she clarified. Good Lord, did he think this would be a one off? “If you want there to be.”

“I want there to be,” he said with a quick nod and wide eyes.

She stretched up to kiss the corner of his mouth, staying there half on top of him. Belle rested her head on his chest, just over his heart, living by the steady beat of it. Her arm draped across him. She slowly curled and uncurled her fingers, her nails grazing along the shape of his ribs. He wrapped her up tight in his arms, holding her to him as if she would dream of getting out of a bed that had him in it. For the first time in weeks she felt safe.


	8. Flesh and Blood

“This is Ruby Red signing off the night shift, and the way the weather’s looking, there’s only one song I can in good conscience leave you with. Let me start your morning off with a little Garbage. Be careful out there today, folks.”

Belle surfaced slowly to the lilt of backward guitar, so warm and comfortable and happy that the feeling was disorienting. It took her a while to wake up properly, and another moment to remember why her back was so much warmer than her front. She kept still, hoping to keep him spooned up behind her. 

The song on the radio went harder and Eamonn began to stir. His arm tightened around her and his legs curled more closely against hers, and she could tell the second he remembered, too, because he froze. 

“Hey, it’s all right,” she told him as he pulled away. She sat up, turning so that she could see him.

“You’re still okay with… what happened last night?” he asked, looking unsure.

It wasn’t the best time to tease, but her brain didn’t get the message quick enough. “You mean the wolf?”

Eamonn blinked, staring at her in confusion. She reached up, taking his face between her hands, and just watched the bliss develop in his features for a second before she kissed him. When she moved back, he was thunderstruck. 

“I’m okay with it. So much more than okay,” Belle assured him firmly. This was going to take some _time._

He leaned in to kiss her again, his fingers stroking at the quilt over her legs. She should have known his kisses would be like this. Careful, sweet. Familiar. Eamonn brought his hands up to her sides, settling there almost hesitantly, and she wondered at how, even after having sex with her, he could be so tentative. 

She wished they could do this, just stay in her bed and enjoy a repeat of the night before. It had been _wonderful,_ and she longed for a slower, extended version of it. But there were things they needed to do today. Things that she was certain would take some convincing. Belle knew precisely the look he’d give her when she told him.

“We need to go back to the well and get your bag.” She said it as offhand as she could manage.

There was that look. _One plus one equals aardvark?_

“Your camera is in there,” she reasoned before he could say anything. “Your camera, your wallet, all of your really important stuff.”

“My stuff isn’t worth your life,” he told her.

She gave him an expression of patience in return. “We’re not gonna die.”

“That’s some confidence you’ve got there.”

“I left my backpack in the woods, too, and I need it.”

Eamonn frowned, suddenly and inordinately aware of just how naked they were. “Should I find my clothes?” he muttered. “I feel like I should have clothes on to argue about this…”

“We’re not arguing,” she replied with a smile.

Thunder rumbled, low and distant, as if to prove Ruby’s point about the weather.

“If we go on, we can be there and back and eating breakfast before it starts raining,” Belle said by way of some attempt at temptation. “Still looking forward to that grilled cheese.”

It was inevitable that he gave in, he supposed. He _did_ need the contents of his messenger bag. If he didn’t get his camera before the rain, it might be ruined, and he couldn’t afford to replace anything. His father sure as hell wouldn’t help him do it. 

“All right. Just there and back.” He let his hands slide away from her when she pushed the covers off to get out of bed.

Belle reached down, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do when she bent over. Luckily, he didn’t have to flounder for long. She turned and tossed his t-shirt at his head. 

He could feel the disaster his hair fluffed out into when he pulled the shirt off. “Thanks.”

She grinned. “See, I’m helpful.”

 _“So_ helpful,” he agreed sarcastically from inside his shirt as he put it on.

His underwear and jeans were beside the bed, but his socks required a bit of a hunt. Belle, taking things from her dresser and closet rather than searching for them, was ready before he was. She bumped her hiking boots over to the bed with her feet. Eamonn was working on buttoning his shirt cuffs when she ran her hands over his hair, smoothing it back down. 

“Hey,” she said softly, and he looked up at her in time for a kiss.

He was still trying to wrap his mind around this, and it seemed to come so easy to her. The same affectionate gestures with a different kind of affection layered into them undid him.

Eamonn’s fingers found and fidgeted with the edge of her sweater. “Hey.”

She pulled away only enough to sit down beside him, leaning to put her socks and boots on. “I gotta brush my teeth. Meet you downstairs?”

“Your dad-?” he asked, waiting until she went to her door to follow her out. The thought of leaving Belle’s bedroom at this time of morning and running into her father was terrifying. It was nested somewhere in there with the death wish he didn’t have.

“Early shift.” Belle looked back at him. “Don’t worry, I checked for his car. You’re okay.”

He passed her by when she went into the bathroom, going slowly to wait idle in the entryway. She practically hopped down the stairs a couple of minutes after him, her hair in a doubled over ponytail, pulling her coat on.

She veered into the kitchen. “You can go on out, I’ll be right there.”

Eamonn cast a suspicious look in the direction of the archway she’d disappeared through, but he went out onto the porch. Fog clung through the neighborhood as far as he could see. The sky was heavy with clouds ready to burst. It was one of those disconcerting days where morning didn’t feel like morning, but something like the day had been stolen away while they slept. He heard Belle’s footsteps, and he turned as she was locking the door. 

“I found another flashlight,” she said lightly.

“You found something else, too,” he pointed out, unable to miss the rifle strap over her shoulder.

She followed his gaze. “Like we were going unarmed?” 

Belle turned and glanced out over the yard. The resolve in her expression faltered when she saw her car. Criss-crossing the driver’s side were layers of angry claw marks gouging deep into the metal, and she could only imagine the passenger side was in similar condition. There was a break splitting most of the way across her window. Her stomach turned with how near they’d come. 

“You wouldn’t happen to be reconsidering, would you?” Eamonn asked.

She hesitated, but her determination was set. “Do you need to go home before we leave?”

. ．⋅・˙ට˙・⋅ ．. 

Despite her worry that the car might bog down in the soggy field, Belle drove it right up to the trees. Closer was definitely better. She’d reassured Eamonn, but she wasn’t unconcerned. The previous night was too fresh in her thoughts to forget that she should be afraid.

The walk through the trees between her car and the well and across the small clearing was easy, considering. They crossed into the far treeline, and the fact that it was morning no longer mattered. The forest was dark. Belle took the flashlight from her coat pocket, adjusting her father’s hunting rifle around so that it was easy to get at.

“I don’t think we’re too far,” she whispered over to Eamonn.

He didn’t respond, but they were both listening hard for any noises that weren’t them. There was nothing. Silence. Their footsteps in the forest detritus. The quiet sounds of their movements were enough, apparently, to camouflage what they missed.

It was just _there_ somehow. They very nearly walked up on it. The black wolf hunkered off to their left, facing away and working at devouring something. 

She smothered the light and swung her arm out in front of Eamonn. They froze. To his credit, he didn’t make any of the panicked sounds that she felt herself choking back. She wished then that she’d given more credence to his reluctance to go back into the woods. They’d be safe at home right now, and not looking into that maw yet again.

Ripping sounds cut through the quiet as the wolf dug its teeth in and pulled strips of flesh away. She couldn’t tell what it was eating, only hoping that it wasn’t some _one._

Belle brought the rifle up. She could actually get it this time. If it was aware that it wasn’t alone, it didn’t acknowledge them. She aimed. 

The wolf swung its head around toward them. It seemed almost startled, itself, before baring a bloody snarl, beginning to turn. Not giving the animal another second to react, Belle fired. Beside her, Eamonn’s hands came up too late to cover his ears against the sound. 

Whether she missed entirely or just caught fur, the effect was the same. The wolf only half recoiled before moving in their direction. She tried to fire again, and there was nothing but the awful click of the rifle jamming. 

“Go, run!” Belle gasped, the words coming out strangled. She dropped the gun to the end of its strap and pulled at Eamonn’s shirtsleeve, fearful tears springing to her eyes.

He was there with her, running as hard as they could back to the car, taking as clear a path as possible. The treeline was in sight when the wolf loped in through it to cut them off, somehow already there. She didn’t understand how it got ahead. It was in no hurry, not even winded. 

_Another wolf._ It occurred to her only as Eamonn pulled at her coat, this time, dragging her a couple of shocked, stumbling steps with him before she could get running again. They were driven back into the trees, deeper into the forest, away from the well and her car and everything that could get them back to safety. Eamonn yelped as a branch whipped across his face. She looked to him, and she caught sight of both wolves at their back, tearing through the rotting leaves and undergrowth after them. They could make it. They’d made it out before, they could do it again. 

A clap of thunder split the air and the storm broke hard. Belle scanned ahead, struggling to find a way to move back in the direction of the clearing, but they were being pushed farther and farther away from it. She felt her clothes grow heavy as they soaked through with rain. Eamonn was gradually falling behind, no longer right by her side. It turned out she didn’t have to worry about that.

Panic rose in her throat as she realized what they were being driven toward. Not a hundred yards more through the trees, they were forced to a dead stop by a wide, tall formation of rock jutting up through the forest floor, and Belle knew they must be nearing the coastline road. She knew the formation. They’d been there before. This was _their_ bit of forest, and they’d explored miles to either side of the woods beyond their well. If there were more distance between them and the wolves, they could easily have gotten around the rock. But they were cornered. The wolves paced apart, positioning wide, making certain they couldn’t attempt to dart one way or the other to get back into open forest. 

She grabbed for Eamonn, catching hold of his sleeve before she found his hand. This was her fault. She’d brought them out here yesterday, brought them out again today. They would be nothing more than a halfhearted memorial in the auditorium Monday morning, and it was her fault.

“I’m sorry,” Belle cried out over the roar of the rain. 

Lightning flashed on the snarling, threatening snap of jaws, and for the first time she could see that the second wolf was brown. Whatever people in town were doing to try and keep themselves safe wasn’t enough. Not with two stalking.

She felt Eamonn’s hand tighten around hers. “Run! You have to run!” he yelled to her, and how the hell he thought she was going to do that, she didn’t understand.

The black wolf pulled low, going taut, and everything happened in the same instant. Eamonn dropped her hand and elbowed her behind him, putting himself in the way as the wolf lunged for her. The brutal physicality of it rooted her feet to the forest floor. The thump of the animal colliding with him. Eamonn being slammed into the ground. The brown wolf leapt in and Belle had never heard anything like the terror and pain in his screams when they fell onto him. 

She dropped to her knees, her legs no longer willing to hold her up. This couldn’t be happening.

The wolves ripped into him, shaking him, tearing at his body with a vicious ferocity she’d never have been able to imagine if she weren’t witnessing it. With the black wolf at his shoulder and the brown at his leg, Eamonn bellowed, fighting madly against them. She heard the crack of bone. As horrific as the sounds were, it was worse when he stopped. 

_Run! You have to run!_

He’d done it so she could get away.

Reality crashed back into her. Belle scrambled up, her feet sliding in the slick leaves before she could get her footing, and she _ran._ She ran as hard as she could. So hard that she couldn’t breathe, that the pelting rain stung her face as she ran into it. Her insides hurt under the strain, her lungs and throat burning as she sobbed fear and grief. She’d left Eamonn back there.

She wasn’t sure how far she got before realizing. The snarling, the hungry sounds, they hadn’t fallen behind. The wolves had left him to come after her.


	9. In the Woods Somewhere

She couldn’t help whipping looks back over her shoulder, checking how far she’d gotten, how much they were gaining on her. The coastline road wasn’t that far. If she could just get to the road, she thought she’d have a better chance of getting away. Of getting help. 

Behind her, she heard the wolves snap and snarl through the noise of the storm. She could feel them closing on her.

Finally, _finally,_ Belle saw watery gray daylight. Close. So close. It took forever to reach the open. Breathing so hard that she was pulling rainwater into her mouth, she broke through, making it out the other side of the forest. Her boots slid on the wet grass up the incline, sending her to her hands and knees, and she dug into the dirt with her fingers, crawling and clawing to pull herself up to the road. She made it at last onto the cracked blacktop and scrambled to her feet again in time to see the flash of headlights. 

_God, let them stop, please let them stop._ She ran onto the road with the wolves bolting out of the trees after her. The driver laid down on the horn and swerved to avoid her. 

There was a screech of tires on wet road. Belle staggered, spinning around in time to see the black wolf run directly in front of a dark purple SUV. A chilling yelp and a heavy _thump_ reached her ears at the same time and the vehicle came to a stop. She collapsed where she stood to sit on the asphalt, fighting to catch her breath as blood spread in a pool around the wolf’s head.

It was Jefferson who got out of the SUV. “What the fuck?” he yelled, raking his hands through his hair as he walked a wide circle around his front bumper and the animal now lying half under it. He turned to her and asked, “Belle?” before looking at the wolf again, giving a second and more disturbed, “What the _fuck?”_

She looked frantically into the forest. The brown wolf paced in and out of the trees, emerging to stand unmoving at the side of the road. After a moment, it ran back into the treeline, heading toward town. 

“Belle?” Jefferson repeated. He leaned down, looking her over before taking her hands and pulling her to her feet. “What are you-”

“He’s hurt, I left him, I _had_ to, to get help,” she practically screamed at him, grabbing his arms in return to pull him toward the part of the forest where she’d come out. “Help! Please, help!”

Belle knew she needed to calm down enough to be intelligible, but she was scared out of her wits and full of adrenaline and Eamonn was alone in the woods, and she physically _couldn’t._ Thankfully, Jefferson seemed to catch enough meaning, or at least sensed her urgency.

“Okay, all right, come on,” he said as he pried her hands away. He went back to the still open door and reached into his vehicle to pull a taser out from under the seat. “Show me.”

She groped at her coat pockets for the flashlight, finding it still on. The way back was somehow so much longer. Belle ran as hard as she could with Jefferson right behind, her light bouncing across trees and underbrush, reflecting back to her off the pouring rain. She was too aware of how much slower she was. It gave her imagination all the more time to present her with soul destroying scenarios of what she might find when she did get back to Eamonn. 

The rock formation rose up out of the darkness ahead of them, her flashlight beam catching the striations. _“Eamonn!”_ she called out, hoping that he could hear her.

There was no sound, no movement when she rounded the end of the rock. She had to slow and cast around with the light to find him. It was his hand that she saw first, palm up and still, thrown out far to the side. Belle fell to her knees next to him.

“Eamonn, wake up…” she breathed. He couldn’t have heard her over the rain, but he didn’t look like he could hear her, anyway. She wanted to grab him, to shake him, but she was afraid she’d hurt him worse.

Jefferson walked cautiously around the other side of Eamonn. “Jesus Christ. Belle-”

Without looking up at him, she asked again, “Help me?”

“I- I don’t know what to do.” He squatted down as if he were trying to find some way that he _could_ help.

She shined her flashlight over Eamonn, gathering what information she could. His right shoulder and upper arm were torn open. His left leg was in similar condition. It seemed the wolves had gone after her before making it further with him, but they’d done more than enough. In the mess made of him by teeth and claws, she saw a flash of white in his arm through the ripped fabric of his shirt, and had the horrifying realization that what she saw was bone. 

There was so much damage. She couldn’t imagine how to fix this. Belle’s hands hovered at his injuries. There was too much.

His clothes were soaked with blood and rain, plastered against his thin body. With a startle, lambasting herself for wasting precious seconds, she reached out to his neck to check his pulse. She could do that, at least. For a moment, she drowned in the nauseating fear of there being nothing. Then she felt an uneven flutter against her fingertips. 

“Eamonn?” She took his face between her hands, yelling at him, “You can’t go, I’m not letting you! I came back!”

“He’s alive?” Jefferson squawked in disbelief. “Shit. Here, here,” he said, throwing off his coat so he could pull the long sleeved t-shirt beneath over his head. Rolling it up tight, he pushed it hard against Eamonn’s torn up shoulder. “Belle, I don’t know how much this is gonna help.”

He took her hand, putting it on the shirt. She leaned her weight on it. Though she knew it had to be torture, Eamonn didn’t respond. Jefferson yanked his belt out of the loops and slid it under Eamonn’s thigh above the wounds there, cinching it tight and pulling back on it.

“You gotta move,” he told her. “It’s okay, leave the shirt.”

“What are you doing?” she asked, but she rocked back on her heels, getting to her feet.

He handed the bloody shirt up to her. “Getting us out. When I have him up, you’ll have to wedge that back under his shoulder.”

Belle nodded quickly. “I can do that.”

She watched with barely tamped down panic as he turned Eamonn over and stood to pull him up by the armpits. Jefferson brought Eamonn’s injured arm up, leaned to heft him over his back, and lifted him in a fireman’s carry. He loosened his grip just enough for Belle to push the shirt between his shoulder and Eamonn’s injury. The position would create pressure there, and she hoped it was enough.

The trip back to the road was agonizing. There was no way to get there fast this time. She walked alongside Jefferson, her hand on Eamonn’s arm, feeling as though she could easily lie down on the forest floor and die, herself. 

They came out of the woods a bit ahead of where she’d made it out the first time, and they had to walk a good few yards farther back down to Jefferson’s car. The black wolf was gone. Belle saw as soon as they left the trees. Not quite as dead as she’d thought, apparently, it was no longer under the front bumper. The blood left behind was already washing away in a lurid smear across the width of the road.

She darted a fearful look around them. “It’s gone…” 

“Noticed that,” Jefferson called to her in reply. “Bigger worms to fry, hon.”

He opened the back hatch with an awkward wave of his foot under the bumper. For once she was actually glad that Jefferson was a rich kid with expensive taste that his absentee folks indulged.

“At least I don’t have to worry about getting that thing out from under my car,” he said far too brightly for someone as covered in someone else’s blood as he was.

Belle climbed into the back, reaching out to brace Eamonn to get him in as gently as possible. She took the rolled up shirt and pushed it over the wound again.

The hatch slammed shut, and driver’s side door slammed barely a second later. He flipped the inside lights on. “We _are_ going to the hospital, right?”

“Yes! Hospital!” she snapped. As if there were any other possibility. 

Jefferson turned around in the middle of the road. He drove faster than was probably safe in this kind of weather, sliding as he rounded corners on the way back into town. She only wished he could drive faster still. 

Eamonn was white as a sheet and freezing cold to the touch. Now that they were out of the rain and the blood wasn’t washing away, it bloomed through his wet clothes. It didn’t seem like keeping pressure on his shoulder was doing much good. The tan t-shirt Jefferson gave her was red through and through, blood seeping from it between her fingers. Belle fought to hold onto hope that he could live through this. 

Chancing a look up, she found them flying past the boathouse. It was almost a straight shot to the hospital from there. She leaned hard on his shoulder. 

Eamonn’s face pulled in pain. A thin sound came from his throat, and she gave a sob somewhere between distress and relief that he showed some sign of life. He strained with a strangled cough. She saw the bright slick of blood in his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I’m so sorry, I-”

Terror washed through Belle. He was gone again before she could get the words out, not so much as having opened his eyes. She might lose him without ever seeing his eyes again, and suddenly the idea of life without Eamonn next to her broke wide open.


	10. The Price We Pay

_Her mom had been dead less than six months when her father uprooted them. He’d packed enough to fit into a set of luggage, allowed her to fill a carry-on with her favorite toys, and told her they would buy things when they got where they were going. It hadn’t happened quite that way. That summer, they stayed with a distant relative and in three different motels before her father found the ad for a suspiciously cheap house in an idyllic little town called Storybrooke._

_The first time she saw Eamonn, he sat in the space between their houses, hiding. She hadn’t been able to imagine from what at that point. He only stared, and she stared right back, as seven-year-olds do. Something compelled her to go over. While her father dealt with belongings and the realtor and problems associated with buying a house sight unseen, she’d gone to sit with the boy next door. He didn’t introduce himself - didn’t speak at all - for hours. In fact, he looked at her as though he was a little scared. Her gift for chatter drew him out. She had a best friend for the first time in her life._

_It wasn’t for years that she understood with the benefit of hindsight why they’d become attached to one another so quickly. Two children who felt alone in the world, and they recognized one another. From that day forward, they each had someone no matter what happened around them. Always._

. ．⋅・˙ට˙・⋅ ．.

They didn’t work on him in the open ER. He was rushed straight into the big, windowed side room, somehow making Belle’s fear ratchet higher. She pressed herself against the wall next to the swinging door, out of the way but needing to stay as near Eamonn as she could.

“I need warming blankets!” a nurse called out. “Wendy, _run_ down to pathology and let them know we have a patient for massive transfusion protocol. Bring as much O negative back as you can carry.”

A doctor that Belle recognized as Merry’s mother ran across from another patient, yelling, “Get Dr. Whale down here _now!”_

Hands over her mouth, she watched them cut his clothes away from his body. The bloody shirt she’d held to his shoulder was dropped to the floor with an obscene slap that sent a shudder through her. The doctor took the belt off his leg, handing it to a nurse.

And Eamonn was… limp. Her chest hurt, watching them move him around, heavy limbed and empty, as they worked quickly on him. He was flesh and bone with spirit missing, and there was a part of her that she hadn’t examined for a very long time that ached. Right now, she didn’t feel remotely near the adult she was supposed to be. She felt like a little girl in another hospital half the planet away, helpless to do anything about someone else she loved more than all the rest of the world being taken away from her. 

Merry’s mother took an instrument from a nurse, making it disappear into the wound in Eamonn’s shoulder. _At least he doesn’t feel it,_ Belle thought. _It would be worse if he were in pain._

She was intimately aware that his injuries were dire, but a nurse’s words floated across to her - “Jesus, how is this kid still breathing?” - and they nearly took her legs out from under her.

If she lost him, she would be alone again, and she couldn’t _do_ that. She couldn’t lose Eamonn and be whole after.

“What do we have here?” Whale asked, swanning past her on his way in. He was barely in the room before he picked up the phone on the far wall and began yelling into it. “I want an OR ready by the time I get upstairs! And get her out of here!”

It took a tall male nurse she didn’t know cupping a hand behind her arm to guide her out before she realized Dr. Whale meant her. “What? No! I’m staying with him!” she protested, trying to push away.

“We need some information to be able to help your friend better,” the nurse said as he took her outside the room, and she could tell that he tried to pacify her. “I need his parents’ phone number. Do you have it?”

Belle looked at the badge clipped to his uniform top. Emrys Myrddin, underscored with a smaller title of Registered Nurse. “He’s nineteen. He’s an adult. He doesn’t need a- a parent for permission.”

“We have to get in touch with his next of kin,” Emrys said with an apologetic smile.

She shook her head. “I’m his next of kin.”

“I mean officially,” the nurse tried again.

_“I’m_ his next of kin!” she insisted more loudly, turning heads. She trembled, and she wasn’t sure if it was anger doing it or cold or something else. “He has a file here. They know him. If you look at his file, you’ll understand.”

A round little nurse with whom Belle was far more familiar came hurrying over. “It’s all right, Emrys, I’ve got her,” Nurse Johanna said, and he went back inside. She looked at Belle’s hands and clothes before her eyes moved back up. “Oh, honey, was this-?”

“No, no, it wasn’t him,” Belle said even as she dissolved into tears again, no longer feeling the need to be on the defensive. “Not this time.”

“Would you be all right cleaning up?” the nurse asked, reaching to rest her hands in some comforting gesture on Belle’s upper arms.

She looked back at Eamonn, where it seemed like they were still trying to get the bleeding under control.

“You can’t be in there right now,” Nurse Johanna told her gently. “But I’ll let you know as soon as you can go in with him again. It’ll be a few minutes before they can even move him.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Belle nodded. The restroom was only a few feet away. She was sticky with blood, and muddy, and wet all the way to her skin. The nurse helped her out of her clothes, then helped wash her hands with a brush. There was so much blood. Dried between her fingers, under her nails. Oddly-patterned rings circled her wrists where it had soaked the cuffs of her sweater. Nurse Johanna bustled out and in again, fetching a pair of scrubs for her to wear, and stuffed her clothing into a plastic drawstring bag that she said would be behind the desk.

“I do need you to fill some paperwork out with me, dear,” the nurse told her when they were out again and Belle had made certain that Eamonn was still there. And still _there._

Nurse Johanna gave her a clipboard and sat her in a chair where she could see. She couldn’t help feeling as if half the pages were busy work to keep her quiet. When the nurse accepted her clipboard back, Belle took a few deep breaths and stepped into the restroom to call her father. The last thing she needed was him reporting her missing or something, and she knew she wouldn’t be home by the time he got off work. Or at all tonight. 

Her father’s phone went to voicemail. She left a message with a lie that she was staying with Ariel to work on a graduation thing. Ariel was always reliable for a spending-the-night alibi. Belle sent her friend a quick text anyway, to let her know. 

She went out with the intention of standing at the window, needing to see Eamonn. There was a flurry of motion. Her heart sank, ready to hear the worst. They began pushing the bed out, though. She got a bare glimpse of him as they whisked him by.

Maybe it was her imagination, maybe wishful thinking, or how much work the doctors and nurses had already done, but somehow the injuries didn’t look quite as horrific in the ER’s fluorescent lights as they had out in the woods. They were still _awful,_ raw and chewed and open, but Eamonn wasn’t as ashen, and suddenly it felt like there was hope. Without thinking, she started to follow him.

Nurse Johanna was there to grab her arm. “No, honey. You can’t go with them. You’ll have to sit in the surgical waiting room. I’ll have Wendy take you up.”

Belle sat in a room populated only by empty gray chairs, beyond antsy. She kept looking at the clock over the snack machine in the corner. They’d been in the hospital less than twenty minutes. It had been less than an hour since they left her house. That didn’t seem possible. 

She was alone for a few minutes before Jefferson materialized in a clean pink scrub top of his own. Having assumed he left, it was a surprise when he sat in the chair next to her, and even more surprising when he didn’t talk. She was just grateful to not have to wait by herself. Jefferson’s silent company turned out more helpful than she anticipated. Any surgery took a while, that she understood, but she was unprepared for the hours they kept Eamonn in the operating room. 

Anxious as she was for Dr. Whale to come out, when he actually stepped through the door, her stomach dropped somewhere in the vicinity of her feet. He didn’t _look_ like was about to deliver bad news. But Dr. Whale tended to have resting smug face.

“Everything went well,” he said before Belle could find out whether she was able to stand. 

A snubbed sob hiccuped through her as she tried to fight back tears. She wasn’t sure how she had any left at that point. “He’s okay? You’re sure?”

Dr. Whale sat half on the chair to her other side, and she turned to face him. “The surgery itself went well. We’ll see about strength and range of motion as he heals. He’s stable, though. That’s what matters right now.”

She rubbed her hands nervously over her knees, having a hard time believing Eamonn was anywhere near stable. “When can I see him?” 

“Soon,” he told her, clapping his hands on his thighs before he stood. “A nurse will be out to let you know as soon as he’s settled into recovery.”

Belle couldn’t help looking to the clock again. No sooner was Dr. Whale out of sight, though, than a nurse in bright blue scrubs came out and headed toward her.

“You’re here for Eamonn Gold?” the nurse asked, as if there were anyone else waiting. “You can come on back.”

She was up from the chair like a shot. Jefferson stuck with her until they got to the door into recovery.

“I’ll be around,” he said, taking a step back.

Eager to see Eamonn and verify for herself that he was still alive, she only hesitated. “You don’t have to.”

He shrugged and said again, “I’ll be around.”

Belle followed through the door marked ‘PACU’ and did as the nurse said when she was directed to a hand sanitizer dispenser. The room was fairly small, with three curtains - two swept open and one closed - and the smell was sharply sterile. She was led over to the closed curtain. The nurse held it back just enough for her to go inside, going in after her.

She bit her lips together until they hurt. He was still too pale. An oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose. The unit was so quiet that she could hear the flow of air through it, but she was thankful she could see his chest rising and falling at all. More blood and antibiotics hung from an IV pole, both on a quick drip. There were surgical dressings over his shoulder and arm. She couldn’t see his thigh, but assumed the same of it. A hospital gown had been draped over his upper body.

Looking around, she found a metal stool against the wall and pulled it over, wanting to sit as near Eamonn as possible. She didn’t know how long it took to wake from anaesthesia. Worry had begun to gnaw at her when she saw movement behind his eyelids and his brow draw. Her heart doubled a beat when his eyes cracked open, so happy to see them. He was clearly groggy, something in his features sad and startled all at once.

“Eamonn?” She reached for his arm, curling her hands together over his wrist. If she’d just awakened in these surroundings, she would be scared, she knew. “Stay still. You’re in the hospital. Jefferson brought us. We’re okay.”

He clenched his eyes shut for a second. His voice was hoarse when he echoed, “Jefferson?”

“He was there on the road. He came back to help me get you out,” she explained.

Eamonn hiccupped a short, thin laugh, muffled behind the plastic of the oxygen mask. “Figures.”

“What?” She tightened her hands on his arm, trying to get more out of him.

“Figures.” He tilted his head toward her, eyes only half open. “Figures I die now.”

“You are _not_ going to die,” she insisted.

Eamonn’s chin wobbled a bit. “You get cold before you die. Right?”

“You were in the rain. And you lost blood. Of course you’re cold, silly.” Belle moved a hand to pet his hair. It was a little worse for the wear, but it was dry.

“I don’t wanna go anywhere,” he said, his eyes wider.

“I know you don’t.”

“I love you. I don’t wanna go.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” She touched his cheek next to the plastic mask and told him quietly, “I love you, too.”

“I’m _so_ cold,” he said again, as though he begged her to help him.

“I have great timing, then, don’t I?” the nurse said as she stepped in. She opened a knit blanket over him. “Fresh out of the warmer.”

She took his mask off and fixed the cannula hanging ready nearby for him, looping it over his ears. “Can you tell me how much pain you’re in on a scale of one to ten?”

For a moment he looked a little stumped, then like he was puzzling it over. “Um. Six? Seven?”

The nurse nodded. She took a syringe from her pocket and pulled the lid off, carefully injecting a measure of the contents into a port in his IV. It seemed to kick in fast. He sighed and relaxed, his eyes falling shut.

“Lightweight, isn’t he?” the nurse asked, raising her eyebrows.

“You should see him after a couple of Tylenol PM.” Belle rubbed her thumb against the top of his arm through the blanket. His sureness that he would die raked along her already flayed nerves. “He _is_ okay, right? He was talking about dying.”

“Mm, I believe he’s out of the woods.” She smiled reassuringly over at Belle. “Sometimes they come out of anaesthesia in odd moods. That’s nothing to worry about.”

Belle nodded, only somewhat comforted. “How long will he be in here?”

With a look at the monitor, the nurse hummed. “His oxygen level and temp aren’t quite where we’d like yet, but they’re improving. It’ll be a few hours before we move him to a room.” She glanced between them. “Don’t worry about the time limit. You’re the only ones here. As long as it stays that way, you don’t have to leave.”

The nurse stepped out again and Belle went back to waiting. She looked at him, concentrating on the familiar rather than the shadows around his eyes and lack of color in his face. Her eyes settled at a scar to one side of his top lip. 

She remembered when his father did it. They were in seventh grade and Eamonn had been late getting home. It was her fault. Her library books would have been overdue if she waited another day to return them, and they’d dropped by before walking home. Malcolm had been in one of his special moods, laying down arbitrary rules and enforcing them with prejudice. He’d backhanded Eamonn as soon as they walked through the front door. She had run home, terrified of the man. Eamonn came over after dinner, after his father was passed out. The split in his lip had probably needed a stitch or two, but he had refused to go to the hospital. They would ask questions, would probably send a cop out, and he didn’t want that. It would have made his father angrier. 

Belle touched the fresh cut crossing his cheek. A couple of butterfly bandages held the edges together. The injury from the stray branch was the absolute least of it, but somehow it was that small cut that yanked away the last of the calm she’d managed to gather. There alone with him, she laid her head down on his arm and closed her eyes, having lost count of how many times she’d cried since this morning.

. ．⋅・˙ට˙・⋅ ．.

It was early afternoon before Eamonn was okayed to be moved into a room. The rain gentled, but continued to rumble and patter against the window behind the pulled curtain, making Belle feel colder than she knew it really was. A kind nurse brought her a warmed blanket of her own, and she sat with it tucked close around her.

She sat holding Eamonn’s hand as though it was all that kept either of them afloat. Her mind kept drifting back toward how stupid she was, how she shouldn’t have made him go into the forest with her. They could have simply told Sheriff Humbert about the wolf there near their well, asked him to get their stuff when he went in to have a look. The worst the sheriff would have done was give them a scathing lecture.

Eventually, Jefferson wandered in with a cup of coffee for her, but she waved it off and he set it on the bedside table. He took a station leaning against the wall near the door, sipping at his own drink, seeming content to prop there.

“Hey…” Eamonn whispered, and she looked up to find his eyes on her.

Teary, smiling, she echoed to him, “Hey.” 

Belle stroked her fingers down over the plane of his cheek. She leaned up to kiss him, so glad he was awake that nothing else could express it.

“So, is this new, or-?” Jefferson asked, sounding a little bewildered.

She looked over, a slightly dippy smile still on her face, and he stared at them over the top of his paper coffee cup. No one else in the world knew. Jefferson, at least, might have a chance of keeping his lips zipped.

Eamonn blinked up at her. “I’m not dead.”

“Not dead. I told you,” she said, sniffling. “You’re um- you’re hurt, though. Really hurt.”

He frowned. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, God, no, it’s not your fault.” Belle pressed two, three kisses to his cheek.

Jefferson cleared his throat. “I’m just gonna…” He gestured toward the door with his thumb before he stepped outside.

“Don’t, please,” Eamonn pled, trying to push himself up in the bed when she began tearing up again.

“Don’t do that, you’re supposed to be staying still.” As desperately as she wanted him awake and talking to her, he would pull everything loose if he strained. She pressed the call button.

A nurse came in far more quickly than Belle expected. She clucked her tongue and injected something into his IV again. “We need to stay very calm, Mr. Gold. You have too many stitches to start climbing around just yet.”

“Wait, wait,” he tried, but the nurse shushed him kindly. She eased him back down as he relaxed into the sedation. He sighed, his voice so much younger when he protested, “Not Mr. Gold. Not my papa. ’M not him.”

“Always prepared when teenagers come in,” the nurse said as she dropped the syringe into a sharps bin on the wall. “If he gets restless again, just let us know.”

Eamonn slept through the nurses’ evening shift change. It was near time to change his dressings when he woke properly, and one of the nurses on duty allowed an extra pillow behind him to prop against and sit. She checked the monitor and IV and everything attached to him before telling them that Dr. Whale would be in soon.

“You might not want to watch,” the nurse said, her tone sounding too much like one used when dealing with children. “Surgical sites can be a little scary to see.”

Belle couldn’t help feeling a bit patronized after the extent she’d already seen of his injuries. Even before the look of panic Eamonn shot her, there was no way she intended to go.

“I’m starving,” Eamonn complained softly when the nurse finally left. 

“We’ll get something soon.” She took his hand, holding onto it again. “Something better than grilled cheese. Ideally.”

She watched his face - the downturn of his mouth, the pull between his eyebrows. They could have been talking about what happened, how he felt, what he remembered. Instead they talked about food. He daydreamed aloud to her about chili cheese fries and lasagna and the dark chocolate malts from Any Given Sundae. She made up her mind that she’d bring some of everything to him, once he could handle it.

There was a tap at the door and an older nurse with steel gray hair and a round, lined face came in. “Hi there. You can call me Nurse Ruth. I’ll be in and out of your room tonight,” she introduced herself, giving each of them a genuine smile. “Dr. Whale is on his way up. I’m here to start removing your surgical dressings before he drops in to have a look.”

Nurse Ruth brought the rolling table over and unfolded a big, blue pad to cover it. She pulled back the shoulder of Eamonn’s hospital gown where it still only draped over him. Belle got up just in case she might have to move, looking on as the nurse eased away the dressing there and placed it on the pad. There were _so many_ sutures. His shoulder and upper arm appeared pieced together. When the nurse removed the dressing on Eamonn’s thigh, it was the same. Belle stood there on the opposite side of the bed with one hand curled over her mouth, wondering how many more they’d had to put inside to hold everything together.

“Doing better this evening, I expect!” Dr. Whale crowed too cheerfully. He took gloves from a dispenser near the door and popped them on.

The nurse stepped aside to make room for him. “Doctor, you should take a look at this.” 

“Oh, now, I didn’t leave my glasses in there, did I?” he said, clearly kidding, but it wasn’t funny just then. When not even the nurse humored him, he asked more seriously, “Infection hasn’t set in, has it?”

“Have a look,” she told him again.

Belle had been so caught up in the sheer number and pattern of black stitches in Eamonn’s skin that the condition of the wounds themselves escaped her until the nurse pointed it out. Possibly because they were nowhere near as raw or bloody as she thought they perhaps should have been.

Dr. Whale examined the wound in Eamonn’s thigh. The injury was still there, and in similar condition as his shoulder - sewn in a patchwork, oddly un-bloodied.

Belle exchanged a confused look with Eamonn, and she could tell his thoughts were running in the same direction as her own. The doctor poked along the lines of suturing with gloved fingers, making Eamonn flinch and groan. He hummed, muttered to himself, finally standing back and crossing his arms to stare at the exposed injuries further.

“Well. There’s no infection. We’ve pumped you full of antibiotics.” Dr. Whale scowled at Eamonn’s wounds. “I suppose it’s a good thing you heal quickly.”

Dr. Whale was still eyeballing Eamonn when another knock came at the door. The nurse from downstairs - Emrys - poked his head in, his eyes skipping over the others until he found her. “Belle French, yeah? The sheriff is here. He asked to be brought up to talk to you.”

She looked to Eamonn, knowing he’d be skittish about her leaving him alone. 

“I’ll be okay,” he murmured, contradicting the expression on his face.

She touched his hand before stepping away from the bed. “I’ll be right outside the door. I won’t even close it.”

To his credit, Sheriff Humbert didn’t utter a single ‘I told you so’ over the course of his questions about when, where, and what. It made her shake again, going back through all of it. His pen scratched against page after page in a small notepad as she answered. 

Belle wrapped her arms around herself. “I left my car out there,” she told him sheepishly.

“I’ll find it,” Graham said, giving her a tense smile. “Call the sheriff’s office if you think of anything else. Excuse me.”

The sheriff steered around her, into the hospital room, and she’d turned to follow right after him when she caught sight of Jefferson. He hovered nearby, waving a hand at her to get her attention.

“I’m gonna go for now,” Jefferson said.

Belle rose up on her tiptoes, throwing her arms around his neck in a quick and grateful hug. “Thank you _so much,”_ she began. She didn’t think there was thanks enough for the help he’d given them.

He shrugged a little awkwardly, looking soft for a second there before backing away to go. “Nothing any decent person wouldn’t do.”

She wasn’t so sure about that, but she didn’t remark on it. She needed to get back in the room. The sheriff was in asking all the same awful questions he’d asked her, Dr. Whale was finally allowing Nurse Ruth to re-dress Eamonn’s shoulder, and he was starting to look like he might pull the covers over his head. As little as she cared for being in a hospital, she knew he liked it even less. 

Being inside the hospital had a single advantage over leaving. What wolf would venture in to come after them? If nothing else, they were safe here.


End file.
